Video Autoplay Hell

[audreyh1]

Over the past few months, it seems like every last news/article website has added videos that automatically play when you load their page, AND when you scroll down past the inline video it gets sent over to a floating viewer that adjusts to stay within your view and continues to play. So you have to stop what you're reading and go stop it. But on some sites they're playing ads before whatever content they insist on playing, and don't let you stop the video until the ad is done. Grrrrr! It's so annoying and infuriating that I often leave the page before I read the article, but more and more sites are adopting this unfriendly user experience! It's amazing how quickly these sites "upgrade" to look and act just like other sites, so the annoying stuff spreads quickly.

Back in the old days you used to be able to click on a link and read an article! I want to read, not watch!

Today I was reminded that Safari has a reader mode button (next to the URL on certain sites) that will cut that stuff out. Yes!

A new version of Safari was announced that will let you stop the video autoplay madness, but I don't know when that will come out, or if you have to upgrade your OS to get it.

 

[CaptTom]

YES!! I'm also a reader not a watcher!

Browsers finally got good at stopping flash player running automatically, but then started supporting HTML 5 auto-play, with no equivalent option to disable that. Funny how the developers give, then take away.

For anyone using Chrome or Firefox, there's a great plug-in called uBLock Origin. There may be others, but when I did my research that seemed like the best option.

 

[MichaelB]

Totally agree. This has led me to keep the volume muted, as unexpected audio woke the baby when DD was visiting a while back. I have also cut back on links to websites because of this - but not Bloomberg, which does it constantly.

This is one of the drawbacks of no-fee news and information sits. They need revenue and will get it one way or another.

I also read the Apple announcement that a new Safari will allow us to control this, but my fear is these updates consume too much capacity and hasten the obscelence of the device.

 

[Totoro]

Ublock origin is a good go-to one, solves most of the issue. Noscript takes it a step further.

They're practically forcing us to move to adblocking and solutions like this. The inventor of the autoplay feature gets no love from me, and every single person who believes it helps their site is delusional. Youtube, yes I am looking at you.

 

[eytonxav]

A new version of Safari was announced that will let you stop the video autoplay madness, but I don't know when that will come out, or if you have to upgrade your OS to get it.

I heard that mentioned in the recent Apple announcements and am anxiously awaiting this as well. I assume it may come this fall.

 

[audreyh1]

I heard that mentioned in the recent Apple announcements and am anxiously awaiting this as well. I assume it may come this fall.

Don't forget about reader mode in Safari now. That cuts the crap out immediately.

 

[euro]

+1 on hating auto play. I'll definitely try noscript - thanks for that suggestion!

 

[Aerides]

Audrey I could have written your post - I feel exactly the same way. The ones that scroll with you are just ridiculous and will lead me to just close the tab, nothing can be that interesting!

I'm also disappointed when an article I want to read turns out to be a video only. I use Chrome, but I keep a couple of tabs Muted for browsing these sites.

 

[scrabbler1]

I hate it, too. In some websites, shortly after I begin reading the article, a video appears in the lower right corner which partly blocks the article. And an ad precedes the video, of course, so the bet I can do it turn the speaker volume down until the ad ends. Then, if I am lucky, I can close the obstructing video and read the article unimpeded.


Once in a while, I try to watch an online version of a TV show I missed. I used to be able to watch ad-free but now they make you sit through ads just to get to the TV show's content. And I have had the ads hang up my browser, forcing me to shut it down and restart it, then return to the website, reload the TV show, and sit through the ads AGAIN! It once took me 20 minutes to watch an 8-minute segment of the show.

 

[easysurfer]

Count me in too as one that can't stand the video autoplay.

To manage that somewhat uBlock origin (as Toroto mentioned) helps. Also, I use a program (windows) call Sound Locker which has a slider to control the maximum volume on the PC as without there'd be times not knowing a video autoplays, I'd get startled. Yes.. grrr!

 

[exnavynuke]

In Chrome, I run Automute which mutes all tabs automatically. If I want to listen to something I just unmute the tab it's in.

 

[audreyh1]

Audrey I could have written your post - I feel exactly the same way. The ones that scroll with you are just ridiculous and will lead me to just close the tab, nothing can be that interesting!

I'm also disappointed when an article I want to read turns out to be a video only. I use Chrome, but I keep a couple of tabs Muted for browsing these sites.

From what I read, Chrome used to have a way to turn autoplay off. But then they removed it?!?!

 

[REWahoo]

From what I read, Chrome used to have a way to turn autoplay off. But then they removed it?!?!

The "Disable HTML5 Autoplay" extension for Chrome works reasonably well.

 

[Lsbcal]

For Firefox the extension Tab Mix Plus has a little audio speaker on the tab that shows up when a video starts. Easy to mute the video.

Also this extension has some nice things like Duplicate Tab to get another identical tab up. Then one can navigate from that while keeping the original easily available. Also a Closed Tab List. You get these by right clicking on the tab.

 

[audreyh1]

For Firefox the extension Tab Mix Plus has a little audio speaker on the tab that shows up when a video starts. Easy to mute the video.

Also this extension has some nice things like Duplicate Tab to get another identical tab up. Then one can navigate from that while keeping the original easily available. Also a Closed Tab List. You get these by right clicking on the tab.

Safari also has a audio speaker in the URL that can be clicked to turn off audio in ANY open page - not just the top one. So its easy to block any noise. But I'm also annoyed by the distracting motion of the video.

 

[Lsbcal]

Safari also has a audio speaker in the URL that can be clicked to turn off audio in ANY open page - not just the top one. So its easy to block any noise. But I'm also annoyed by the distracting motion of the video.

I try to endure some distractions to build up my advertising immunity.

 

[GrayHare]

Since older browsers don't have HTML 5 autoplay they avoid such video, and whatever new tricks sites have up their sleeves. It's one of the reasons many people have stopped upgrading.

 

[powerplay]

The last few months I have encountered sites that won't let you see their content until you disable ad blockers. I find that frustrating also along with the Autoplay videos.

 

[Lsbcal]

Since older browsers don't have HTML 5 autoplay they avoid such video, and whatever new tricks sites have up their sleeves. It's one of the reasons many people have stopped upgrading.

Security issues with this strategy?

 

[Sojourner]

The "Disable HTML5 Autoplay" extension for Chrome works reasonably well.

+1

In my experience, it works perfectly on the vast majority of "video autoplay" sites. Highly recommended for all Chrome users who want control over how and when video plays on websites.

 

[Chuckanut]

This is one of the drawbacks of no-fee news and information sits. They need revenue and will get it one way or another.

Yes, there is no free lunch. If the ads on a site I like are not obnoxious I will turn off the add blocker for that site. That seems fair to me. Sites that are obnoxious I 'fix' by not going back to them.

 

[W2R]

Oh, Brave New World! Looking for news sources

Audrey, I couldn't agree more with what you said in the first post of this thread. What is even more aggravating to me is that it seems like suddenly we have no good news sources any more.

1. We have NO paper newspaper here. The local newspaper prints a front page (only), and wraps it around a bunch of ads on various types of paper, then dumps it non-consensually on my lawn. You can't pay and get an actual newspaper because no such paper is being printed.

2. TV network new shows have become a joke, IMO. Oh for the days of yore, when such shows were run by journalists who presented relatively unbiased news that had been verified before broadcasting it.

3. So the above means that many of us rely on the internet as our only source of news. And yet, many of the websites simply FREEZE due to all the popups and so on that Audrey so well describes. If one uses ad blocker, it will freeze the computer too because when faced with this much advertising it can be quite a resource hog.

Even more annoying is when you get to read half of the first sentence on these "news" websites, and then are forced to stop. It's as though it is training you not to read. Like many, I want to read my news instead of watching videos. Is the written language becoming an ancient artifact?

4. Even some news forums are being ruled with a heavy hand to bias the information one gets, and recent Reddit scandals are a good example of what I mean by that.

So what do we have left as a potential, readable source of news?

I find it difficult to get news at all without going through websites that analyze the news according to our own political biases. Amazingly, these sites are relatively easy to navigate and manage to survive quite nicely with little to no advertising (imagine that ). This is fine for what it is, but I also want to read just plain unbiased news. As Joe Friday said many times on Dragnet, "Just the facts, Ma'am".

I am so nostalgic for the days when individuals would write their own websites in HTML, providing very lean, fast loading websites with no graphics, no ads, and lots of fascinating text to read. Those were the days!

 

[aja8888]

1. We have NO paper newspaper here. The local newspaper prints a front page (only), and wraps it around a bunch of ads on various types of paper, then dumps it non-consensually on my lawn. You can't pay and get an actual newspaper because no such paper is being printed.

2. TV network new shows have become a joke, IMO. Oh for the days of yore, when such shows were run by journalists who presented relatively unbiased news that had been verified before broadcasting it.

3. So the above means that many of us rely on the internet as our only source of news. And yet, many of the websites simply FREEZE due to all the popups and so on that Audrey so well describes. If one uses ad blocker, it will freeze the computer too because when faced with this much advertising it can be quite a resource hog.

Even more annoying is when you get to read half of the first sentence on these "news" websites, and then are forced to stop. It's as though it is training you not to read. Like many, I want to read my news instead of watching videos. Is the written language becoming an ancient artifact?

4. Even some news forums are being ruled with a heavy hand to bias the information one gets, and recent Reddit scandals are a good example of what I mean by that.

So what do we have left as a potential, readable source of news?

I find it difficult to get news at all without going through websites that analyze the news according to our own political biases. Amazingly, these sites are relatively easy to navigate and manage to survive quite nicely with little to no advertising (imagine that ). This is fine for what it is, but I also want to read just plain unbiased news. As Joe Friday said many times on Dragnet, "Just the facts, Ma'am".

I am so nostalgic for the days when individuals would write their own websites in HTML, providing very lean, fast loading websites with no graphics, no ads, and lots of fascinating text to read. Those were the days!

W2R, that's a great summary of my feelings as well, although we do have a newspaper locally.

Not to derail this thread, and thanks Audrey for making this annoyance a topic, but during the last 6 months, several ROMEO friends of mine and I have decided to not subscribe to any newspaper (Houston Chronicle, specifically) and have not watched the local or national news on TV.

We did this as an experiment and we have found ourselves less stressed and we now discuss topics that are part of our retirement lives or local happenings. In other words, we don't miss the baloney that is being force fed to the peons.

(REWahoo, thanks for the tip on disable HTML autoplay.)

 

[CaliforniaMan]

Ublock origin is a good go-to one, solves most of the issue. Noscript takes it a step further.

They're practically forcing us to move to adblocking and solutions like this. The inventor of the autoplay feature gets no love from me, and every single person who believes it helps their site is delusional. Youtube, yes I am looking at you.

Thanks, just added Noscript. I learn so much from this great forum and its members!

 

[imoldernu]

For Chrome... give Poper Blocker a try.
Can use it with AdBlock Plus, and Disable HTML5 Autoplay.

For news, in addition to 10 online websites, am addicted to NPR radio. Helps in maintaining the multitasking part of the brain, as the memory deteriorates.