Facebook To Autoplay Videos With Sound On By Default (androidandme.com)

Currently, Facebook videos autoplay on your News Feed as you scroll up and down. While they eat data and various resources, the saving grace is that they are silent -- that is, until now. Facebook has announced several new changes to its video platform today, including a setting that will autoplay videos with sound turned on by default. Android and Me reports: The audio of videos will fade in and out as you're scrolling through your feed. Fortunately, Facebook will at least make it so that audio won't autoplay if your phone is set to silent. If you're not a fan of this change, there will be a setting to turn audio autoplay off. The change is that it will now be on by default for everyone. Other feature introductions are larger previews for vertical videos, a picture-in-picture mode for videos so you can watch and continue scrolling (and even exit the app without interrupting the video on Android), and a Facebook Video app coming to smart TVs.

Comments

Re:Facebook use plummets during business hours

[saloomy]

This will just lead to browsers muting sound by default

Re:That's nice

[Mr D from 63]

Yet another reason to not use facebook.

Yes people like you are too stupid to be able to change a setting and your only option is failure. Obviously even the most simple of tasks is well beyond your capability.

Facebook sucks by default, no settings can change that.

Re:Vertical Video

[TWX]

Facebook is running out of new users at their current intelligence level. In order to expand (which apparently is what modern business requires, it's not enough to simply remain the same) they have to figure out how to acquire more and more customers, which means lowering the bar further and further.

I still have to wonder how sound their business model is. Have they actually turned a profit yet?

Re:Facebook use plummets during business hours

[Slashdot Junky]

While you may be correct, all videos, audio, and animated image formats should be click-to-play by default. The move to HTML5 video and audio has been especially annoying for me, because Firefox seems to not support this simple functionality. It is way overdue. My preference is for the elements to not be downloaded until I click play. This isn't limited to ad-related content. A lot of articles, news or not, include video clips that aren't needed since the words are sufficient.