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."

Comments

Just no

[Calydor]

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.

Re:Just no

[Knightman]

But but but how then are they going to be able play paid content containing ads about something totally irrelevant?

Re:Just no

[kheldan]

"Stop" (insert annoying thing here)

Stop using Facebook.

Here's the hard, cold, uncomfortable truth: You're getting all entitled because it's been free to access all this time, and now they're leveraging the fact that you're all entrenched in Facebook, and they're making you PAY more and more by putting more and more ads in your face, and collecting and selling more and more of your information. If you were PAYING to use Facebook then it would be a different story, but you're not; you're a FREELOADER, and now the bill is coming due -- and you're getting all upset over it.

STOP USING FACEBOOK. Just say goodbye to your fake online friends, close the account, and WALK AWAY. This is literally the ONLY course of action you have. Seriously: How long do you think it'll be now before they change the terms of service to make it against site policy for you to use ANY adblocker or do ANYTHING to avoid ads or data collection? STOP USING FACEBOOK.

Anoyher good reason

[rossdee]

not to use FB

Mandatory xkcd

[LichtSpektren]

Mandatory: https://xkcd.com/134/

Re:Mandatory xkcd

[Kierthos]

The people who make the decisions to have auto-playing videos on their sites should be beaten with sticks.

Not the IT/web guys implementing it. The execs/marketing guys who go "Yeah, that's what we need. Autoplaying videos with minimal sound controls." Beaten. With sticks.