Ask HN: Does anyone actually like autoplaying of videos on websites?

3 points by jastingo 9 years ago | 3 comments

Genuinely curious about this. Just to be clear - I'm referring to the autoplaying of videos on services like Netflix, Amazon Video, Udemy, and YouTube, as well as news sites and sports sites.

As a user, there are very few situations I can conceive of where autoplaying of videos would be useful/desired. Even if I was in such a situation, I would much prefer the option to toggle autoplay on and off myself as needed.

Anyone out there genuinely like these default autoplaying settings? If so, why?

cocktailpeanuts 9 years ago |

I think it makes sense for Youtube at least because most of the times when people click to visit, they're there to watch the video. (I guess you could technically be there to only read the comments and not watch the video but that's very rare)

On the other hand, on sites like Udemy it makes less sense since there are other contents people want to interact with on the page. I think they're just employing a bad ux.

And once we get into spam territory like some shitty sites where most people visit expecting textual content and they just throw an autoplay video at you (which in many cases follow you around even if you scroll away), that's completely different from above two. These guys do this to make ad money.

Safety1stClyde 9 years ago |

If you're in the kitchen cooking and your hands are covered with flour and chicken, then it's handy to leave youtube on autoplay so that it can play back all your favourite Billy Idol songs without having to clean off your hands to adjust what it's playing. The problem is that if you leave Billy Idol on autoplay for too long, it then takes you to things like A-Ha and before too long you have Morten Harket screaming about "Take on me" when all you wanted was more sneering.

owebmaster 9 years ago |

Yep, the ones making money with views.