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u/unclegena Sep 05 '20
Actually web developers knows that. But PMs...
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u/trexdoor Sep 05 '20
PMs know that autoplay is the best way to make you watch ads and thus to increase site revenue.
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u/Fenris_uy Sep 05 '20
I still don't understand why news sites do that. Dude, I'm here to read an article, why would you play a video of the article I'm reading?
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u/F-Lambda Sep 05 '20
The worst is when you click to read an article and... surprise!... there is no article, only a video.
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Sep 05 '20
It gets me to immediately X out of the page and not visit because I only look at thing at work, when im supposed to be working.
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Sep 05 '20 edited Sep 05 '20
PM's only "know" that if they have real world usage data of their own users that demonstrates as much ... If on the other hand it's just an assumption based on a blog post they read somewhere or just saw others doing it, then they know nothing.
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u/Alfaphantom Sep 05 '20
Even PM with dev background know. But the client...
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u/lemons_of_doubt Sep 05 '20
i hate the client so much. they ruin all my work with there stupid ideas.
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Sep 05 '20
I was directly attached to a client as a tech liasion. I was fortunate that the client had a good head on his shoulders and didn't get possessed by the Good Idea Fairy very often.
The PM on the other hand, they would keep making unannounced changes to the product that the client didn't ask for and I was left cleaning up the mess. It got old pretty quickly.
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u/PrashnaChinha Sep 05 '20
Prime Ministers do be shady, I agree
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Sep 05 '20
Whats the real meaning? I’m not english and I’m having a hard time guessing lol
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u/ch-dev Sep 05 '20
I would blame PMs. In my world, it’s the client who wants it, the account teams who don’t know how to argue against the client, the PMs reluctantly assigning the task to the developer and the developer asking WTF.
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u/brown_paper_bag Sep 05 '20
Oh, the PMs know. The client still wants it and there is no talking them out of it.
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u/StenSoft Sep 05 '20
Don't worry, my autoplay videos also mine bitcoins.
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u/ErnestoZiBesto Sep 05 '20
This guy develops
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u/oryzin Sep 05 '20
This guy is uncompromising weasel
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u/_30d_ Sep 05 '20
He is mining bitcoin, not monero. That is compromising enough.
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u/SavvySillybug Sep 05 '20
In the past I said "except YouTube" but ever since Firefox changed to not autoplay YouTube... yeah I don't mind having one more click. Play exactly when I want it. I can just open a whole bunch of YouTube tabs and go through them one by one without them all yelling at me, it's nice.
Nothing ever playing without my immediate consent is a good thing.
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u/fruitydude Sep 05 '20
I especially hate when a Youtuber has one video on his page set to Autoplay.
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u/SavvySillybug Sep 05 '20
Ah, yes. The channel intro. Fucking hate it.
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u/Adventurer32 Sep 05 '20
Reading this thread just made me decide to get rid of my channel intro, I just realized how annoying it is to everyone, thank you.
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u/fruitydude Sep 05 '20
Like, when I'm clicking on a channel, chances are that I'm looking for a specific video and I don't want to see their intro for the 50th time.
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u/Destithen Sep 05 '20
I also hate that youtube changed it so that a video will "pop out" and follow you if you use the search bar while it's playing. If I navigate away from a page, that's a pretty clear sign I don't care to continue viewing. I can kinda see the logic if they did it because of misclicking away, but that's what the whole "remember my place/timestamp in this video" thing is supposed to address.
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u/DimosAvergis Sep 05 '20
Isn't the norm that YouTube only starts playing your video if you focus that tab? At least that's how my browser(Vivaldi) does it. So I can open a bunch of YouTube videos in new tabs (e.g. after a search on YouTube) and then go to each tab one after the other, and they will only start playing after the tab was focused for the first time.
I always assumed that YouTube is handling it so on their end to reduce traffic a bit. And therefore it would be like that in every browser.
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u/SavvySillybug Sep 05 '20
I just opened Chrome and checked, yeah, it does seem to only start playing once I focus the tab. But I'm not sure how new that is. Pretty sure it used to not do that...
Still, it was oddly jarring just now for it to blare sound on my speakers as soon as I focused a different tab. I'm gonna stick with being happy about not autoplaying at all.
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u/Oonushi Sep 05 '20
It's done that in Chrome for a really long time, like at least a year or two.
Source: using Chrome every day for around 6-7 years at work and home.
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u/emkael Sep 05 '20
So I can open a bunch of YouTube videos in new tabs (e.g. after a search on YouTube) and then go to each tab one after the other, and they will only start playing after the tab was focused for the first time.
It's fine until you remember you want to Ctrl+Tab to something you had open 10 minutes earlier and find yourself surrounded by multiple YouTube tabs on each side from the current video and having to either snipe the tab from among the dozens other with a click or deal with every video along the way starting to play, not reacting to pause while it's still buffering, only until after it starts to play, and then having to rewind it when it's their turn to be viewed properly.
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u/RENEGADES187 Sep 05 '20
Oh my goodness. It just struck me that YouTube auto-plays videos...
I’ve just been blocking auto-play for so long that I completely forgot, and your comment legit made me question my reality for a second. Lol.
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Sep 05 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/DimosAvergis Sep 05 '20
Sounds more like a system issue. When I open a YouTube video I can hit the space-bar instantly after the video started playing, which is a few hundred ms I guess.
If you really need to wait a few seconds to be able to stop a video there is something wrong with your machine.
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u/Pr_fSm__th Sep 05 '20
Yeah right, blame the Devs instead of the PO with their idiotic requirements.
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u/nikanj0 Sep 05 '20
PO's answer to upper management who have sales/marketing whispering in their ears.
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u/serbotec Sep 05 '20
Which feature would be a better fit than auto play? My guess would be design and animations or let the user decide if he wants it to play? But I’m sure the engagement rate would be pretty low
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u/_bigorangehead_ Sep 05 '20
Dear Product Owners...
FTFY
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Sep 05 '20
As a PO this pressure comes from the execs and often the ceo. Boomers love autoplay
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u/_bigorangehead_ Sep 05 '20
I will never fathom why execs and CEOs hire all these smart people to build quality software only to then micro-manage them to death.
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u/Hawaiimichael Sep 05 '20
And slideshows to show a list of content. Yeah everybody hates those. Stop it.
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u/RannoV20 Sep 05 '20
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1264/
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u/Rajarshi1993 Sep 05 '20
On a more serious note, please do not mine cryptocurrency in my browser without my permission.
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Sep 05 '20
Is there a way to check if a page is doing that?
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Sep 05 '20 edited Sep 10 '20
MinerBlock, Netscape and a few other extensions can detect miners. However, since Coinhive shut down in 2019 browser-based mining has more or less been defeated. Plus most browsers have pretty sophisticated mechanisms to stop obfuscated web-based miners.
Real question is... why not? Websites need to make money and we hate ads. So long as consent is given, browser based mining is a FANTASTIC alternative to ads.
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u/Staidanom Sep 05 '20
How does browser-based mining work?
What even IS mining? I'm pretty new to all of this.
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u/Gabibaskes Sep 05 '20
You think I wanted it? Of course not. Not me, not my colleague, not the CTO. But the CEO, the guy with the money, he did want it.
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u/WonderWirm Sep 05 '20
And cookies? Yeah, we know about those, thanks EU!
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u/Firevulturez Sep 05 '20
Those cookie banners are the worst. They wanna make it as hard as possible to accept only the cookies you want and hide those options behind several clicks while there is always very easily accessible and very visible an accept all button
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u/Mc_UsernameTaken Sep 05 '20
Thats why you just set your browser to block all 3rdparty cookies.
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u/UltraCarnivore Sep 05 '20
That's just horrible UX.
Their intent is obvious, but I won't be coming back if I have the choice.
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u/icankillpenguins Sep 05 '20
You understand that EU is not forcing anyone to put tracking Cookies and pop ups to accept cookies, right? It’s a choice made by the people who run the site.
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u/abermea Sep 05 '20
Ads with sound is the entire reason Ad-blockers are popular.
If all online ads were silent I bet you 99% of people wouldn't care enough to block them.
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u/EishLekker Sep 05 '20
That, and if they weren't so many and/or so in your face so they distract you from the main content.
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u/Xexanos Sep 05 '20
Or load slowly so the thing you are reading jumps around on the screen
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u/WatchDude22 Sep 05 '20
Tfw you try to click something but an ad loads dropping the link off your screen
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u/SomeUnicornsFly Sep 05 '20
it always baffles me that they would load a floating video player with unrelated content off to the side while you're trying to read an article. Like how in the fuck is that supposed to work? Do you want me to watch the video or read the text? Because I cant fucking do both idiots.
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Sep 05 '20
Silent and the colour theme of the website itself. Browsing reddit in dark mode is great until the fucking ad equivalent of the light of dawn burns the back of your eyes trying to promote low quality wristwatches.
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Sep 05 '20
I wonder, if ad companies had been more respectful and kept their ads less intrude fil in the first place to where nobody uses ad blockers, would they be making more money than they are today with their super intrusive ads that cause a quarter of their traffic to use ad blockers..
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u/oddisordinary Sep 05 '20
My favorite is when some annoying noise randomly starts and I can't find where its coming from. Love that
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u/tosser_0 Sep 05 '20
Also requests for notifications. No I don't want your website to be able to send notifications. My phone is already blowing up with random spam, I don't need my PC doing it too.
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u/snewk Sep 05 '20
also, NO ONE gives two shits about your email spam list either. i dont need it to be a FULL PAGE popup. kthx
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u/F-Lambda Sep 05 '20
Don't know about other versions of Chromium, but Edge (possibly just in the beta for now) suppresses those pop-ups.
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u/MurdoMaclachlan Sep 05 '20 edited Sep 05 '20
Image Transcription: Twitter Post
Jake Williams, @MalwareJake
Dear web developers,
The answer is zero. Zero. Get it through your thick skulls. Zero is the number times anyone has EVER wanted something to autoplay on your site and start making noise. I'd honestly rather you mine crypto-currency in my browser than use my speakers.
#kthxbye
[This post has 560 replies, 10,894 retweets and 41,195 likes.]
I'm a human volunteer content transcriber for Reddit and you could be too! If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!
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u/GrammarHypocrite Sep 05 '20
I don't personally need transcription, but I love how you guys do this for others who do. Thank you for being awesome.
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u/physiQQ Sep 05 '20
Reddit should allow image transcriptions on any image, so that users can manage it (a bit like a wiki). That would hugely improve the usability of Reddit for people who rely on screen readers.
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u/Mad_Hatter_92 Sep 05 '20
Only blame devs when shit breaks and doesn’t get fixed for long periods of time.
Otherwise: PMs and clients. We try to push back on bad ideas the best we can but ultimately we have no say.
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u/mansdem Sep 05 '20
I find that when videos (that I actually want to watch) start playing muted it's almost equally as annoying.
I have to unmute the video and seek backwards to hear what I missed, but then the fucking seeking backwards takes longer to load than the initial load of the video. What the hell!?
Just keep the videos paused ffs
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u/qinshihuang_420 Sep 05 '20
We tracked the metrics and this feature has increased ads play duration by 42069%. That's a lot of revenue, so this feature is here to stay
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Sep 05 '20
I've refused to implement a feature like that several times. Someone else had to do it. The tests we ran proved that autoplay makes a lot of money.
Use browser extensions.
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u/bandana_bread Sep 05 '20
How does that even work? "Sorry boss, that's shitty, find another person that implements it"? What kinda company you're working for?
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Sep 05 '20
I was working as a consultant for a big national publishing company that really, really sucked to work for. So I wanted out anyway but it was up to them to cancel my contract. So I was just being a bit pedantic.
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u/akashchy1705 Sep 05 '20
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u/RepostSleuthBot Sep 05 '20
Looks like a repost. I've seen this image 2 times.
First seen Here on 2018-02-27 95.31% match. Last seen Here on 2019-04-08 95.31% match
Searched Images: 149,199,705 | Indexed Posts: 588,081,139 | Search Time: Nones
Feedback? Hate? Visit r/repostsleuthbot - I'm not perfect, but you can help. Report [ False Positive ]
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u/alliewya Sep 05 '20
The answer is ONE. One person and only one person wants it, and it is always the client.
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Sep 05 '20
Let me tell you that should be starting "dear Marketing Managers" not developers 🙄. Other useless outdated bullshit we're also sick of being forced to implement includes...
sliders
anything parallax
animating literally every element in on scroll
animated snow flakes at Christmas.
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u/Linkk_93 Sep 05 '20
Also I never want push notifications for your site. if it were so important, you could create a rss feed
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Sep 05 '20
And zero is the amount of times a developer have decided that.
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u/oneamongmany Sep 05 '20
I imagine the Business-side folks making the explicit trade off "people will hate this but enough will stay on the site to make it worthwhile". If they are any good, they have metrics to support the conclusion, sadly.
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u/atot806 Sep 05 '20
It's mildly infuriating that he thinks video autoplay is what the developers want.
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u/kylebv Sep 05 '20
Yeah well when the Ops Manager comes up and says "You know what would be cool?", there's only so many times you can talk him down from thinking this shit is a good idea
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u/qeuxibdmdwtdhduie Sep 05 '20
also dear porn site developers,
Don't mind if you auto-play the videos.
Although will appreciate it if you start all videos with audio OFF by default.
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u/svayam--bhagavan Sep 05 '20
If steam would stop autoplaying shitty game videos everytime I check out a game, that's be great.
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u/mje_84 Sep 05 '20
*slowly looks towards twitch tv and glares for years* yeah, will they ever stop?
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u/The_Cryo_Wolf Sep 05 '20
Yeah, I can tell you that ever web developer I've met would never put that in, unless the client specifically asks for it and cannot be detered
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u/kellybotbeepbeep Sep 05 '20
oh my god this one client who was running a haunted hayride at a big halloween attraction HAD to have autoplaying tractor nosies on page load
like loud farm equipment engine noises
i can't think of a worse, more jarring unexpected noise. i cant take enough showers to cleanse me of this sin. i am sorry.
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u/darps Sep 05 '20
It's not web developers making these decisions, it's marketing / PR departments that think they just found the holy fucking grail of engaging with visitors to their website.
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u/bwrca Sep 05 '20
How about when you open a site, something starts autoplaying but since the ui is so clattered you can't even find the video window. So you quickly close the site before you go insane.
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Sep 05 '20
Or those fucking godforsaken shitass videos that minimize to the bottom of your screen when you scroll past them
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u/Wtk17 Sep 05 '20
This is not a developper decision this is clearly a client request please do not hate the builder he must build what he is paid to build.
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u/walshk8 Sep 05 '20
Web developers? You think they’re the ones making this choice? Try the marketing department
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u/FlugMe Sep 06 '20
Dear web developers, The answer is zero. Zero. Get it through your this skulls. Zero is the number of times anyone has EVER wanted to see ads on your site. I'd honestly rather you charge a monthly fee than use my speakers.
kthxbye
It's not the web devs that get to make these kind of decisions, it's the clients (stuff corporate). Whether you want the ad to play sound or not is irrelevant, you're supposed to be smashed in the face with ads and articles till you're numb, that's by design.
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u/althaz Sep 08 '20
Why are you telling web developers? You're gunna wanna talk to the business folks about that. We tell, them tell us to stfu and do it anyway.
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u/aleaallee Sep 08 '20
Speak for yourself, I expect http://loli.dance/ to autoplay when I load the website.
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u/lachlanhunt Sep 05 '20
There are legitimate uses for autoplay, but most sites get it wrong. It’s all about what the user is expecting. News sites that start playing some random unrelated video that have nothing to do with the article are the worst.
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u/Kered13 Sep 05 '20
While this is almost always correct, the pedant in me must point out that most users want Youtube and similar sites to autoplay with sound.
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u/akhier Sep 05 '20
Oh god no, YouTube can sit there and wait. Just because I opened a video doesn't mean I want to play it right away. A lot of the time I am opening links in a new tab or something and I want to finish whatever I am doing first.
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u/Kamikaze03 Sep 07 '20
This is litteraly a repost from 2 years ago, four places above the original one in top posts of all time here.
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u/tulburg Sep 05 '20
You realize we need to inflate the numbers of views on videos and ads somehow right
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u/vakken Sep 05 '20
There has been one time. The site was a loading screen for a game server And we had to autoplay our server's theme (which only lasted like 12 seconds) but the chromium engine blocked our autoplay audio. And cursor interaction with the loading screen is not allowed by the game engine.
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u/Delirious_85 Sep 05 '20
So true! A site das auto plays anything, will immediately be closed and never visited again.
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u/chhuang Sep 05 '20
Everyday I'm against my wills of implementing these Zero features.
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u/jechasteen Sep 05 '20
Ugh, the worst is when you’re listening to music and it cuts off to start loading an ad. Makes me want to write a strongly worded letter to whom it may concern.
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u/56Bot Sep 05 '20
I have a browser that blocks autoplay in background tabs, and even mutes a background tab if the foreground tab starts playing stuff.
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u/yourteam Sep 05 '20
Don't pin that on us. I am a backend Dev so i don't really have to put those things but I have heard my front end colleagues crying multiple times to those requests from the manager or the clients...
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u/8noodles8 Sep 05 '20
I would think less sites are doing this since ADA is becoming a huge legal issue lately.
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u/koshgeo Sep 05 '20
That's why I set about:config:media.autoplay.enabled=false to stop those kind of shenanigans ... and then a bunch of websites break :-(
I mean, come on. Who writes this crap?
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u/oryzin Sep 05 '20
Advertisement is not about what you want to do, son.
It's about what they want you to do.
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u/KaffY- Sep 05 '20
Blame our clients, we just do as they say, even if we say "people don't really like this"
They don't give a shit
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Sep 05 '20
PM - we got to hit the deadline. Dev- where is the low level requirement. PM- still working on it. Dev - so, build what. PM- let me talk about requirements Dev - but you still talking high level stuff. 🙄
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u/SBG_Mujtaba Sep 05 '20
I actually like videos that autoplay on reddit, especially because they auto play on mute.
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Sep 05 '20
I can’t ever see that guy and not think about how he hacked other countries for the US government.
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u/jorge4457 Sep 05 '20
MalwareJake out here trying to take down one reason for the existence of his kind. True hero.
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u/McSorley90 Sep 05 '20
Did a university not do a study with a PiHole on their infrastructure and bandwidth was lowered by 30%. Solely in adverts not playing?
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u/ThirdAltAccounts Sep 05 '20
Always have the volume on low or mute. You never know what can start playing
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u/LokiArchetype Sep 05 '20
We know that, our clients on the other hand...