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UK politicians and have urged Twitter and Facebook to change the default behavior of autoplaying videos following the spread of footage showing the shooting of a WDBJ-TV reporter and cameraman:
MPs have called on Twitter and Facebook to take action after many users were confronted with autoplaying videos of the murder of a US TV news crew. The footage was suspected to have been posted by the murderer on Wednesday. Because the sites have set video to play automatically by default, many people saw the video without choosing to when it was shared into their feeds.
A parliamentary group said the firms should ensure that users are warned about graphic content before it plays. The chair of the cross-party Parliamentary Internet, Communications and Technology Forum (Pictfor) said that both social media sites should automatically sift for such content. "Facebook, Google, Microsoft and others have already worked together with government and regulators to prevent people being exposed to illegal, extremist content, using both automatic and manual techniques to identify footage. Social media, just like traditional media, should consider how shocking other content can be, and make sure consumers are warned appropriately," Matt Warman told the BBC.
The Conservative MP for Boston and Skegness added: "For victims, friends and families it's important to make sure that, in an online world without a watershed, users know what they're about to see and have a reasonable opportunity to stop it." He said that, while users can change their own settings to stop videos auto-playing, Facebook and Twitter "need to be aware that one size does not fit all". He said: "Many people who are ordinarily happy that videos play will have seen shocking footage by accident, without warning of its graphic nature."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Friday August 28 2015, @01:24PM
Youtube has a tiny slider for setting autoplay to off. It's somewhere near the right edge. That's right, they don't want people noticing that control.
The really aggravating part is that nearly every commercial web site with video is doing autoplay. I especially try not to visit ABC news. That's a lot of autoplay options to find and turn off. Wipe your cookies, and autoplay is reset to its default of "on".
It's a good thing we can still control the volume on our computers. Last thing I want when I'm quietly surfing is for some noisy video to fire up and disturb me and everyone around me.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by inertnet on Friday August 28 2015, @03:09PM
I must have changed the "up next autoplay" setting at least a thousand times, but it always came back on the next day. All youtube cookies are left alone so that can't be the reason. I finally found the liberating Greasemonkey script that I already posted about which the grandparent obviously hasn't found yet.
(Score: 2) by number6 on Friday August 28 2015, @04:18PM
I found your prior post. Thankyou +++