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Chrome 66 Arrives With Autoplaying Content Blocked By Default (venturebeat.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Google today launched Chrome 66 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The desktop release includes autoplaying content muted by default, security improvements, and new developer features. You can update to the latest version now using the browser's built-in silent updater or download it directly from google.com/chrome. In our tests, autoplaying content that is muted still plays automatically. Autoplaying content with sound, whether it has visible controls or not, and whether it is set to play on loop or not, simply does not start playing. Note that this is all encompassing -- even autoplaying content you are expecting or is the main focus of the page does not play. YouTube videos, for example, no longer start playing automatically. And in case that's not enough, or if a page somehow circumvents the autoplaying block, you can still mute whole websites.
I had a moment of fun fitting this news into Bruce Shneier's notion of electronic feudalism. As serfs on the Google plantation, we look to Google to protect us from various raiding barbarians. We pay for this protection by allowing ourselves to be farmed by the Google ad machine.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
It's not just advertisers. Who else is fed up with clicking on a news link only for it to start playing a 720P autoplaying video version of the same article that's already written below it? The web isn't a fucking television you stupid fuckers. Offer people a video if they want one, but don't shove this bandwidth sucking loud piece of shit I never asked for, that takes longer to consume than the writing below it, on me. Assholes.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.