Chrome’s Crusade Against Autoplaying Video Just Got Serious

With Chrome’s more recent updates, Google is doing its best to eliminate the greatest annoyances found on the web. In this vein, from version 66 of the browser, autoplaying video will be a thing of the past, with Google soon to clamp down on the media behaviour.

In a post on the Chromium blog outlining some of the changes in 66, Google’s Naina Raisinghani follows up on the company’s promise to alter the behaviour of autoplaying videos to make them less obnoxious:

As announced earlier, autoplay is now allowed only when either the media won’t play sound, after the user clicks or taps on the site, or (on desktop) if the user has previously shown an interest in media on the site. This will reduce unexpected video playbacks with sound when first opening a web page.

[referenced url=”https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2018/02/you-can-now-mute-websites-forever-in-chrome/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/ypxkbtomf0p7ku3qi8al.jpg” title=”You Can Now Mute Websites Forever In Chrome” excerpt=”Rest, my child. CNN’s autoplay videos can’t hurt you any more. In the latest public version of Chrome, you can just right-click any tab and select ‘mute site’.”]

With this change, Google is basically one step away from blocking autoplaying videos entirely, which I wouldn’t put past it if the more nefarious websites and advertisers find ways to circumvent these changes.

Admittedly, it’s hard to do considering it’s built into the browser, but I can see people doing wacky things with canvases if they get desperate.

I have a better suggestion though: just don’t have autoplaying videos. It’s not that hard, really.

Chrome 66 Beta: CSS Typed Object Model, Async Clipboard API, AudioWorklet [Chromium, via The Verge]


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