Ask HN: Why are news sites putting auto playing videos everywhere?

2 pointsahmedfromtunis2 comments

I noticed lately that more and more news sites are putting auto playing videos in their articles. That's infuriating. What's their incentive and how to stop it?

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#users * duration = $$$ you're staying longer waiting for the video and watching it and that corresponds directly to the money they make. additionally, they can also autoplay ads.

the problem is that the browser makers (google, microsoft, apple) use autoplay on their sites, so that they are not really interested in blocking it. you can try some extensions that block autoplay, some adblockers offer that feature too. firefox is also an option.

I don't know why, but I solved the problem by the following three techniques:

I set my browser's `content.autoplay` setting to `false`.

I stopped visiting sites with video autoplay.

I stopped visiting sites which lead me to site with video autoplay.

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