In the last few weeks I’ve noticed that videos are autoplaying on websites I visit. That is, before I can even scroll down to see what’s on the page, and decide for myself if I want to watch/listen to any videos therein, they start playing. Annoying! I hate, hate, hate unwanted, unsolicited noise coming from my computer. Whether such autoplaying is a conspiracy or simply a global setting I changed inadvertently, I don’t know. But I did find extensions for both Chrome and Firefox that have returned control of my computer to moi. FlashControl for Chrome and FlashBlock for Firefox. Ahhhh, silence is golden!
PT, the absolute BEST way to ensure I won’t be coming back to a site is to begin my experience with some unwanted noise! I couldn’t even begin to count the number of sites I’ve written off because of that. I’m gonna look into that Firefox extension right now! 😀
I was desperate. I usually check Huffington Post every day, and whatever changed, every time I clicked on a story, the video started playing. It was find a solution or give up one of my favorite sites. The solution has its shortcomings, like showing only a gray placeholder box that gives no clue as to the content of the video … but at least I don’t get blasted with noise now when I click on a story.
I have FlashBlock running now, and I see what you mean about those placeholders. It’s weird to see then in place of videos when I previewing a draft post, and they’re even there in place of the widgets in my sidebar. On the plus side though. Pages with flash on them load a lot faster! 😀
BTW, it turns out my son has been using FlashBlock all along to prevent flash objects from displaying on the web-browser games he plays! 🙄
Figures our kids would know all the tricks. I don’t like the placeholders; I’d much prefer seeing the “paused” video with the title, picture, etc. I was hoping maybe I’d changed some setting that was making the videos autoplay, but if so, I haven’t found it yet. At least I can whitelist friends’ sites like yours so I don’t have to look at the placeholders.
Well this is disturbing news!! Thanks for the tips on how to circumvent this……..I’m not posting videos on my blog anymore…at least that’s the plan……I was told by a friend that one of my older posts..a video….had explicit videos ATTACHED to it…when the video finished some really nasty stuff was offered up for my viewers to select from if they so chose….this was done by youtube…..unbelievable….so, needless to say, the video is GONE and I won’t be watching any on other sites either!
If you add “&rel=0” (without the quotes) to the end of the YouTube code in your post, those unwanted “related videos” at the end won’t show. Depending on which method you use, your code would look like one of these:
htt://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcm3XO432l8&blahblahblah-u&rel=0
[youtub=htt://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcm3XO432l8&blahblahblah-u&rel=0]
That’s a zero at the end, btw.
WOW!!! Thanks so much!! Now I can put up a few that are fun and short! Thank you, thank you!!
You’re welcome. 🙂
Hmm. Autoplay hasn’t been much of a problem for me as yet, but when it does happen I’m just as irritated as you, PT. Couldn’t find an app to control it for my favored browser, Safari. Guess I’ll deal with it when the time comes.
I should try browsing HuffPo with Safari and see if the videos still autoplay. If they do, I’d know for sure that it’s HuffPo’s doing and not some I did on my end.
Interesting. No autoplay when I used Safari on HuffPo. I guess I’ll have to dig deeper into my Firefox and Chrome settings. Or maybe switch to Safari. (Life was so much simpler back when I used IE for everything … )
Okay, mea culpa. I just found a deeply buried Chrome setting where I had allowed plug-ins to autoplay. Unchecked it, disabled FlashControl, and all’s back to normal. Whew. (No such luck with Firefox.)
HuffPo got on my last nerve with that last week, when not one but two videos on a page fired up automatically at once. I paused both of them and still, there was some kind of newscasting spewing forth. So thank you for sharing your finds.
Aha! So it’s not just me. They really are doing it!