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posted by cmn32480 on Friday August 28 2015, @08:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the and-they-are-annoying-too dept.

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."


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  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @08:12AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @08:12AM (#228887)

    Mooooooooooooooooo. Mooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Lick each other's asses, you stupid COWS.

    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 28 2015, @07:34PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday August 28 2015, @07:34PM (#229140) Journal

      I sense the opportunity for a new, Soylent-specific meme: "Bovine Man."

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by davester666 on Friday August 28 2015, @08:19AM

    by davester666 (155) on Friday August 28 2015, @08:19AM (#228889)

    MONEY! We MUST MAKE MORE MORE MONEY. If a few people get their feelings hurt, or are traumatized...so what. MONEY! It's why the videos are set to autoplay by default and you have to hunt around to disable it for a short time before it is accidentally reset to enable it again. Money!

    This message brought to you by the letter C, for Capitalism.

    • (Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @08:31AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @08:31AM (#228893)

      If a few people get their feelings hurt, or are traumatized...so what.

      Correct. Why bother catering to oversensitive people?

      • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday August 28 2015, @04:25PM

        by tangomargarine (667) on Friday August 28 2015, @04:25PM (#229054)

        When it's simply "do I want more money or do I want to care about others at all" the choice should be clear.

        This being America, obviously the answer is "fuck you got mine."

        --
        "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
        • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday August 28 2015, @04:28PM

          by tangomargarine (667) on Friday August 28 2015, @04:28PM (#229056)

          Erg. Of course I notice right after I hit "Submit" that this is an article about the UK.

          Damn you stealth editors! :)

          --
          "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
          • (Score: 2) by davester666 on Friday August 28 2015, @07:08PM

            by davester666 (155) on Friday August 28 2015, @07:08PM (#229123)

            Yeah, the article is about people in the UK, but they are discussing the behaviour of American companies...

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @02:53PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @02:53PM (#229427)

            That's ok. We know from your comment history what an asshat you are.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @04:56AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @04:56AM (#229328)

          I really don't see why other people's offense should be your concern. Offense is taken, not given.

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by MrNemesis on Friday August 28 2015, @11:56AM

      by MrNemesis (1582) on Friday August 28 2015, @11:56AM (#228944)

      Fuck autoplay, I find it pretty disgusting that this sort of thing gets posted at all, autoplay just being the putrescent icing on top of the shitty but-then-we-can-get-more-money-from-advertisiers cake. It was the same bollocks with all of those beheading videos as well even when there wasn't any monetary reward in doing so. Thousands seemed to take perverse pleasure in watching them on youtube, newspapers had stills plastered all over the front page of people about to be murdered. Lovely to look up from my book and seeing that picture all across the carriage on my morning commute. I've never had any desire whatsoever to watch snuff and, frankly, people who do terrify me.

      On a semi-related topic, I highly recommend Nightcrawler [imdb.com]. A deeply unsettling drama/satire about the exploitative nature of modern media (and on a par with Network [imdb.com] in my opinion) made even scarier by the fact that live 24/7 news is apparently just as unsettling (I'm the token Area Guy who doesn't watch TV).

      --
      "To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
      • (Score: 1) by SomeGuy on Friday August 28 2015, @04:52PM

        by SomeGuy (5632) on Friday August 28 2015, @04:52PM (#229066)

        Yes, money.

        And that goes for the TV news to. There is lots of good, positive, real, news going on in the world like local events, and such, but what do they ever air on the news? Shooting, shooting, rape, horrible car crash, interviewee spewing "very scary stuff", child molester, shooting, fire, interviewee saying "you can't be too safe!!1!!", lockdown from yet another fake bomb threat, robery, shooting, anchor spewing "very scary stuff!", on a slow day falling trees, shooting, and now for the weather....

        They only ever air the knee-jerk attention getters that take no real reporting effort. Because money.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @02:59PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @02:59PM (#229429)

          The irony in your statement is that the reporter and cameraman who were killed were killed while interviewing the local Chamber of Commerce chairperson, a nice, non-scary local story.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by geb on Friday August 28 2015, @08:40AM

    by geb (529) on Friday August 28 2015, @08:40AM (#228896)

    I've got a few people on my twitter feed muted, not because I dislike what they post, but simply because all the videos make rendering the page incredibly slow. Twitter is already a nightmarish mess of scripts that takes several seconds just to display a list of text, and video content makes it much worse.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by basstard on Friday August 28 2015, @09:58AM

      by basstard (5595) on Friday August 28 2015, @09:58AM (#228918)
      Not only eat resources, they can much more, they kept crashing my browser. Flashblocker keeps facebook displaying browser up and running, and as a bonus, myself a bit less insane.
      • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @11:25AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @11:25AM (#228932)

        You'd retain even more of your sanity if you got your ass off of fb...

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @11:27PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @11:27PM (#229231)

          My FB may have abused me, but it doesn't happen all of the time. I know deep down FB is good, even if counseling is off the table. FB promised to respect my wishes, and this time I'm sure FB meant it. It wont happen again, probably.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by pkrasimirov on Friday August 28 2015, @08:45AM

    by pkrasimirov (3358) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 28 2015, @08:45AM (#228897)

    Make the same with ads. No autoplay. Let me decide when and what I watch.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @09:03AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @09:03AM (#228901)

    Blame the browser. Click to play has been available for Flash for years now, but as we finally ditch Flash for HTml5, click to play is still missing. Firefox has it coming up for Firefox 41, but whether or not it works remains to be seen (The setting has been in about:config for a long time but not working). The other browsers seem to be more pro-advertising (Google runs an advertising network, Microsoft seems to be trying to surpass the NSA,...) so I'm guessing not much hope there.

    Click to play is the reason I still use Flash to watch Youtube. When using a tabbed browser, autoplaying videos are just terrible (ok, I have three people talking at the same time, now which three tabs do I need to pause?)

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @09:14AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @09:14AM (#228905)

      > Click to play is the reason I still use Flash to watch Youtube.

      I disable javascript on youtube and don't get autoplay with html5 either.

      But I also use VLC for all my youtube playback because the user-interface is so much more capable - especially for talking head videos which I can play at around 1.5x speed to be less boring.

      Just drag-and-drop the youtube URL into VLC and it automagically works. Or you can use this add-on. [mozilla.org]

      • (Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday August 28 2015, @03:21PM

        by jdavidb (5690) on Friday August 28 2015, @03:21PM (#229020) Homepage Journal

        Just drag-and-drop the youtube URL into VLC and it automagically works

        Thank you! I've been using a plugin to download Youtube videos and then play them in VLC for a couple years now. I had no idea how much easier it could be.

        --
        ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @02:40AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @02:40AM (#229302)

          Only ones it won't work for are those with DRM. There might also be a problem with age-verification videos - in the past they worked transparently but just last week I had one that wouldn't play in VLC. But I didn't investigate the details at all. Whenever I get a problem video, I just point youtube-dl [github.io] at it - which bypasses all the DRM crap - and play the file from disk. A total no brainer.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday August 28 2015, @09:25AM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 28 2015, @09:25AM (#228908) Journal

      Firefox has it coming up for Firefox 41

      ??? Is this a chapter from the "emacs for emacs" saga?

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday August 28 2015, @04:35PM

        by tangomargarine (667) on Friday August 28 2015, @04:35PM (#229060)

        Come again?

        --
        "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
    • (Score: 4, Informative) by inertnet on Friday August 28 2015, @09:59AM

      by inertnet (4071) on Friday August 28 2015, @09:59AM (#228920) Journal

      I don't need a solution for autoplay, but I absolutely hate the "up next autoplay" from Youtube, BBC and others. I found a simple Greasemonkey script to get rid of the "up next autoplay" in Youtube: https://gist.github.com/Yonezpt/51adf278a24488f75ff0 [github.com]

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Friday August 28 2015, @04:44PM

        by SomeGuy (5632) on Friday August 28 2015, @04:44PM (#229063)

        Youtube's autoplaying of recommended/next videos blows my mind. I had posted a couple of videos ages ago, and when testing my videos recently using a fresh browser, I was shocked that after the video finished, it automatically started playing a particular video that had content I strongly objected to.

        Individuals can change this behavior on their machine, but there is no way to prevent random new viewers from seeing these. I certainly won't be using youtube for any more videos unless they stop this behavior.

        I'd imagine that out there right now there is some child watching a youtube video full of fluffy bunnies or whatever, immediately followed by some reporters getting shot, or the goat guy, or anything else the uploader did not intend.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by zugedneb on Friday August 28 2015, @12:20PM

    by zugedneb (4556) on Friday August 28 2015, @12:20PM (#228949)

    ...for the CIA and the army to kill for the greater interest of the nation...
    It is a matter of honor. Understand what life is.

    The first time I saw shooting, and dead people, I was 13 In romania, when the revolution came.
    Now and then, I visit some sites that show the execution ISIS carries out.
    There are now, and always have been child prostitutes sucking the dick and taking the dick of war these criminals.

    If you are an adult, do not complain.

    Know your world, make your choices.

    --
    old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
    • (Score: 3, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 28 2015, @01:48PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 28 2015, @01:48PM (#228973) Journal

      I had to scroll all the way down here to find it.

      I find it hard to understand that Americans can revel in the "victories" claimed by it's armed forces, and to accept the crap done by the "intelligence" communities, but they are so terriblty shocked when brought face-to-video with the real action.

      We insist on being babied, and pampered, and protected from the consequences of our actions.

      Life is for real, people. Most of you PAY to park your asses in a theater seat, so that you can watch psychotic sumbitches blow people away, blow stuff up, wreck cars, abuse women, children, etc ad nauseum. But, God forbid that some reality sneak up and bite you in the ass.

      I have little sympathy for people who get smacked upside the head with a glimpse of reality.

      Besides - if you're dumb enough to have autoplay enabled, then you're dumb enough to watch whatever the hell some dipstick loads on your browser.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by jdavidb on Friday August 28 2015, @03:18PM

        by jdavidb (5690) on Friday August 28 2015, @03:18PM (#229018) Homepage Journal

        I find it hard to understand that Americans can revel in the "victories" claimed by it's armed forces, and to accept the crap done by the "intelligence" communities, but they are so terriblty shocked when brought face-to-video with the real action.

        America is by no means a monolith and for the most part people on this sort of site are disproportionately more likely to oppose the actions of America's armed forces for the past N years.

        I supported the American military action of the early 2000's and came to realize it was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I now oppose essentially every American military action since the Mexican War. (Fun fact; Abraham Lincoln branded that war a war of imperialistic conquest.)

        I don't support any of this stuff and the sooner America's government lets its dissenters peacefully stop supporting it the better.

        --
        ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
        • (Score: 3, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 28 2015, @03:34PM

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 28 2015, @03:34PM (#229031) Journal

          I understand very well that the US is not a monolithic political belief system. I argue with my fellow Americans daily. Due to the fact that so many Soylentils are more liberal than conservative, I have plenty of opportunity here. ;^)

          As for our recent wars - I supported the invasion of Afghanistan. The invasion, mind you, not the war. Afghanistan should have been a punitive expedition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_expedition [wikipedia.org]

          Iraq should never have been invaded. Fact is, we created the environment for Daesh (or ISIS, if you insist on the media name) to rise up. Maybe we even created Daesh. That was one of our greatest blunders, ranking right up there with Operation Ajax.

          Sometimes, I think they must perform lobotomies on all of our elected officials. They do the stupidest damned things!

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @07:09PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @07:09PM (#229124)

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax [wikipedia.org]
            I reply, just to post the link. Read this...
            This, by far is the most sad thing regarding political development, that happened in middle east. A lot is just consequences.

          • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 28 2015, @07:53PM

            by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday August 28 2015, @07:53PM (#229149) Journal

            Due to the fact that so many Soylentils are more liberal than conservative

            I say it's time to retire those tired, threadbare labels. They are very deliberate constructs designed to manipulate and dis-empower (I hate that word, but there is no other). And, no, "libertarian" is not the new label for those who reject the false dichotomy of "liberal vs. conservative."

            For example, I 100% agree with your post, so does that make me a "conservative?" Because I don't identify that way--I could never identify with a group that openly and semi-openly embraces racism, lest I accept that my wife (Korean) and children are sub-human. I also don't identify as a "liberal," because I can't stand whiny free-loaders. Nor do I accept "libertarian," because objectivism is a flawed ideology that thrives with minds that were equally prone to swallow Marxism as articles of faith in an earlier time.

            How about we all be "critical thinkers" who eschew the easy, knee-jerk labels?

            --
            Washington DC delenda est.
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @02:44AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @02:44AM (#229305)

              > I also don't identify as a "liberal," because I can't stand whiny free-loaders.

              Does that mean you are good with stoic free-loaders?
              Frankly the association between "liberal" and free-loading seems pretty arbitrary.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @03:04PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @03:04PM (#229430)

                Ha. Yeah, that's his "critical thinking" being demonstrated. It is high time to do away with these disparaging labels and generalizations. Especially those fucking liberal free-loaders!

    • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @03:14PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @03:14PM (#229433)

      Ah, good old dependable Soylent. Where else can you take a story on something like autoplaying videos or space probes or new phone technology and have it so quickly turn into anti-US political bullshit? You have to post an honest to God real science story to not have this happen because nobody here reads those stories.

      I expect the self-satisfied smugness and back slapping in the Snowden-type stories, but does it have to be in every fucking story? It gets so hard to walk across the room around here being careful not to step across someone's many arbitrarily drawn lines of moral absolutism and find yourself on the "you are a fucking worthless piece of shit" side of the line.

      • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by zugedneb on Saturday August 29 2015, @05:04PM

        by zugedneb (4556) on Saturday August 29 2015, @05:04PM (#229461)

        Personally, I made it a rule to never troll science sites.

        As for the anti-us propaganda, let me tell you what.
        You are the most failed motherfuckers on the face of the planet, when taken into account what you CLAIM about yourself and what GEAR you have to your disposal.
        You talk big, have a lot of shit, but mostly you harass other, preferably on the other side of the planet.

        As I told you in some other post, the only reason that all of you are not executed by now is that you are the only fucking nation that dropped atomic bombs on civilian targets.
        It is simply to costly to kill you all.

        So, first of all, you gun and rights loving motherfuckers: fix your fucking execution squad of police force.
        Then, come back and talk.

        --
        old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by number6 on Friday August 28 2015, @01:09PM

    by number6 (1831) on Friday August 28 2015, @01:09PM (#228963) Journal

    If you play a YouTube video, when it reaches the end it will 'Autocontinue' and play whatever the fuck may be the next video. It really annoys me!
    I may be doing something else and have my browser minimized, but this 'Autocontinue' bullshit forces me to stop what I am doing, go back to the YouTube page and press stop!

    Does anybody know if there exists a Greasemonkey script to fuck this 'Autocontinue' feature off?

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Friday August 28 2015, @01:24PM

      by bzipitidoo (4388) on Friday August 28 2015, @01:24PM (#228966) Journal

      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

        by inertnet (4071) on Friday August 28 2015, @03:09PM (#229009) Journal

        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: 3, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Friday August 28 2015, @04:33PM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Friday August 28 2015, @04:33PM (#229057)

      And the fun part where 90% of the time whatever video is queued next is something you're not even remotely interested in watching.

      The Miriam-Webster site has the least-annoying application of autoplay I've seen: they disable sound on the video until you mouse over it.

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by halcyon1234 on Friday August 28 2015, @04:56PM

    by halcyon1234 (1082) on Friday August 28 2015, @04:56PM (#229068)

    All this "users want autoplay" is thanks to decisions that came out of things like a Mozilla "user study"... that studied 16 people can came up with the conclusion that users will get upset and confused if they can't see Grumpy Cat.

    "Where is grumpy cat?" [mozilla.org] - Mozilla's MOST ADVANCED USER!

    --
    Original Submission [thedailywtf.com]