In today’s fast-paced digital world, we often rely on various online platforms to quench our thirst for knowledge, information, and entertainment. Among these platforms, news websites hold a significant position as they allow us to stay updated about current events across the globe. However, despite their essential role in delivering crucial content, many of these sites have resorted to irritating tactics that negatively impact user experience. One such tactic is the automatic playback of videos accompanied by full audio when one opens their webpage.
This practice has become increasingly common among news sites due to the belief that users prefer a multimedia experience over plain text articles. However, there is no empirical evidence to support this assumption. On the contrary, many have raised concerns over these autoplaying videos. These concerns range from audio intrusion into private spaces, lack of control over sound output, to the consumption of data and battery life on mobile devices. The most prominent criticism against this practice stems from the mismatch between the video’s subject matter and the article itself. In other words, these videos are unrelated to the content of the page and often serve solely as advertisements, disruptive interfaces, or attempts at misleading engagement metrics.
Does ANYONE actually like these videos? I typically scramble to find the close and/or mute button as soon as I can. Infuriating.
It’s the sort of thing that gets decided in a weekly meeting where some dipshit in middle management says “Guys, we need more engagement. Can we force them to watch a video? Is that possible? Seems like that should be possible.” Then some long-suffering coder has to admit that yeah, it’s possible. Then the coder then mumbles that it’s also a bad idea and very obnoxious, and that most users will just mute it or leave the page…but the manager douchebag doesn’t even hear it, because he’s already patting himself on the back for his ‘brilliant innovation’.
Meanwhile the real question is why major browsers don’t seem to have a “do not ever fucking make a noise unless I explicitly tell you to” setting. I swear, Chrome and IE look like they do, but it never seems to actually work. And then there’s “this setting is managed by your administrator” bullshit on top of that…
I feel this way about the “This website would like to send you notifications” popup. I will never, ever click accept on that. Why are you still asking. It’s not even embedded in the website, it would be so easy to build a toggle into the browser to blanket reject those requests. Why is this even a “”“feature”“” at all ffs, after email and push notifications and junk mail why do these shitty companies need yet another way to freely spam unwilling consumers. You did not under any circumstances have to hand this to them.
I think firefox’s version works properly? At least, I’ve not noticed it as an issue since switching back to it from Chrome
Not specifically browser settings, but in Windows and Linux you should have access to a per application mixer and can reduce / mute the volume of your browser to zero.
Yeah but that mutes sound even if you want it (and toggling it back isn’t exactly one click). I don’t want to remove the ability to play sounds, I want to disable autoplay of anything that makes sounds (except perhaps if I white-list a site?). Or mute/unmute on a per-tab basis with the default being muted. As mentioned there are settings that you’d think would do this thing, but they’re either bugged or deliberately crippled because I still seem to get plenty of autoplay video with sound that finds its way through on my work pc.
Nope. I uBlock element zap them if they happen to slip through the annoyance filter.
You pause/mute/close it at the top, and the damn thing has the audacity to follow you down as you scroll and resume playing. 😡
Short answer is no.
Long answer is definitely no.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed but most of what we see online isn’t because we like it, it’s because the service provider’s greed to shape their metrics into the most profitable results.
Fucking fextralife wiki took over the Souls games not because they are better (they are significantly worse information wise or just copy pasted than/from the fandom versions).
But they gamed their SEO by having autoplay embedded videos in every fuckdamn page so any time someone went to see some info they were giving the site cross engagement and vastly boosting their pagerank.
Deliberate manipulation that google was warned about and basically said “We don’t care”.
I hate it so much infact that I actually remember which sites do it and don’t click their links.
Fucking tragedy that “comedy news” websites like the onion and wonkette are actually head and shoulders above “respected” news sites in terms of professionalism.
I could actually see a complete reversal where they become the actual “Paper of record” and people refuse to even wipe their ass with a rag like the times or wapo.
