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Facebook Is Testing Autoplaying Video With Sound (thenextweb.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook is testing a "feature" that autoplays video clips on your feed with sound. It's not a very big test, but there's a possibility the company could roll it out to a larger group of users. The Next Web reports: "The company is currently trying two methods of getting people to watch video with sound in Australia: the aforementioned autoplaying, and an unmute button on the lower right corner of videos, like Vine videos on a desktop. The latter certainly sounds more reasonable; the last thing you want is to be checking Facebook quickly during a meeting or class, and suddenly have your phone blaring out an advert because you happened to stop on a video. Thankfully, you can disable the 'feature' from your settings, but the point is there's nothing wrong with the current opt-in approach, especially considering how many companies are embracing video captioning, and that Facebook even has its own auto-caption tool for advertisers." "We're running a small test in News Feed where people can choose whether they want to watch videos with sound on from the start," a Facebook spokesperson told Mashable Australia. "For people in this test who do not want sound to play, they can switch it off in Settings or directly on the video itself. This is one of several tests we're running as we work to improve the video experience for people on Facebook."
Stop telling me what I want to see and hear.
Stop loading tens of megabytes without my direct consent.
Stop taking control away from me and making me have to jump through hoops to get it back.
If I want to watch a video I will goddamned well click on the PLAY button. If I do not click on the PLAY button chances are the video was not interesting to me in the first place.
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not to use FB
Mandatory: https://xkcd.com/134/
Auto-play videos with sound were the *reason* I started using ad-blocking.
What if you're currently listening to music, or on a VoIP call, or any other list of things that requires you to NOT mute the sound because Facebook is being stupid?
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Because nothing says "better video experience" like autoplay on a web page.
That is all.
I only use FB for communication with some hard headed family members that can't be bothered to understand email and a bit of business related stuff. The 3rd time an update set auto-play videos back to on on my mobile devices (wasting my data for their shit), I uninstalled. I check once every week or so from a desktop. FB can go fuck itself.
Silence is a state of mime.
I prefer to start videos manually on sites dedicated to streaming video. Those are sites where I expect to watch videos, and the video is going to be visible on the screen when the page loads. It gives me a chance to ensure that I'm on the right page, a chance to read the description, and a chance to prepare to watch the video (because sometimes I'm just looking for stuff that I want to watch).
As for autoplaying video on a site that serves a different purpose altogether, after clicking a link that I may not even know links to a video, that's a definite turn-off.
I easily blow through my 5G data plan on my iPad just READING ARTICLES! Gonna have to start checking to see who's serving up 50M+ pages with all the ads and videos and remove them from my feeds. Except it's everyone now, isn't it. Blew through 150M yesterday in 30 minutes of reading articles. How do we fix this?
-- The pinhead celt
What was wrong with it is you aren't likely going to click on a video for an advertisement. I'm not sure why people aren't grasping this concept. Everyone should be using adblock at this point, and flashcontrol or whatever extension stops videos from autoplaying.
Facebook testing how long it takes to reach 100% usage of adblocking software in its user base.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't really use facebook. However, I would love a chrome extension that would allow me to have the sound turned off in the browser and selectively enable on a tab by tab basis.
Next up: autoplay midis and blinking text! Because half the people using Facebook either weren't alive or aren't old enough to remember the true horrors of bad late 90s web design. And you think those full-screen ads are bad!
One of the problems we face today, is that some people are, believe it or not, still using Facebook. I think this will help.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
I use Adguard on android, "https://adguard.com/en/adguard-android/overview.html". It functions as a VPN, so it can block ads even on mobile data. Some of the premium features require buying a license. The biggest problems I have are it sometimes interferes with sending and receiving texts, and I have to temporarily disable it to use my work vpn. I'm using a Samsung Galaxy S6 connected to AT&T.
...than organizations/developers who turn on my muted speakers to play their fucking content.
And don't fucking start with turn off this or turn off that. I turned off the speakers and that should be enough. If you turn them on, you are a cock sucking asshole who should die in a car fire.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
And with one decision Facebook ruins any goodwill they had and guilt I had about blocking their ads.
Popups. Talking ads. Redirects. Full page bullshit. PDF malware. Any of these make me feel completely justified in blocking ads.
Well folks, it has happened. facebook has taken to total abuse of its product (the product being facebook "members" whose info is sold to advertisers).
No, this is just another social study done by Facebook. They're one damn clever bunch!
Of course they know that everyone and their dog hates blaring ads. They're not stupid. But they want to know just how much bullshit their users will put up with. And it's easy to determine simply by looking at the amount of ad blocking going on in their user base. They can slowly crank the annoyance meter up and watch the ad blocking rise. That's marketing research you can take right to the bank!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And in next month's hypothetical news...
UPDATE: Facebook Cancels Autoplay For Videos
A report out today states that Facebook's usage statistics dropped precipitously over the past month, as users apparently simply stopped casually opening Facebook on their mobile phones almost entirely. One incensed user reports that his Facebook feed just suddenly started blaring an advertisement for Trojan condoms, right in the middle of his Sunday morning church service. Says the user, who prefers to remain anonymous, "I was totally shocked and embarrassed! I mean, I have never -- never, I tell ya -- shopped for condoms online! I mean, don't tell my girlfriend, but sure... I've surfed a little porn now and then -- but how the heck could Facebook know about that??"
Facebook executives cast the entire blame for this dip in usage on a software technician who had developed and deployed the new "Autoplay" feature for videos showing up in end-users news feeds, which was silently rolled out to all users and which naturally defaults to "on." The feature has now been rolled back in a panicked effort to minimize any further damage, but analysts are skeptical that the once overwhelmingly popular service will be able to reclaim its former glory. One executive was quoted as saying, "Hey, don't look at me! It's all that developer's fault -- and trust me, we've sacked him but good!" This reporter has asked Facebook for more details on what happened to the executive who authorized the new feature, but Facebook has not yet responded to queries as of press time.
Not because everyone's pages were complete clusters of vomit flung on to pages, but the damn execution of music for ever page I jumped on and then when I would open eight tabs, I would have to listen to eight songs loading at once.
Facebook on the other hand was this clean cut, very professional looking website that didn't need any of these advertising dollars at the time.
Monetization wasn't a big deal at the time and the platform was solid. Fast forward a decade and we see this cluster that I left a decade earlier.
Why? Why should we deal with this bull?
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