They are one of the most infuriating things for me. But I curious to know why is this a popular pattern in websites. Do people actually stop whatever they were planning to do and watch the video ?
I’ve blocked them on all my devices. But once in a while I see them when I use someone else’s devices and I wonder.
Your entire list is wrong. Just talk to me please. No one cares about these sorts of things. You caught a ghost.
Never. You can block that in Firefox by default.
Never, they’re the Internet equivalent of those people who listen to their music in public without headphones.
This is actually what o truly do not understand about marketing, how are they so disconnected as to think that folks are actually watching and paying attention to that shit. Are they just delusional?
I do, and then I forgot why I was on that website to begin with. Takes me forever to get my bearings back. I hate it.
I see people saying that ublock can get rid of those. If someone can share how, that would be awesome. My ublock only blocks ads.
Right click on the video under ublock select block element. A popup will show up in the bottom right where you can fine tune. If the video has a custom right click menu just do it anywhere else and in the fine tune options click select element then the video. Also make sure you use uBlock Origin.
None of me do.
Not me. In fact if it isn’t blocked and I can’t easily get rid of it, I’ll bail on the site altogether.
Honestly don’t understand what the benefit to anybody is. If I want to watch it, I will, if I don’t, I want. They’re just making the overall experience worse.
I assume it’s some bonehead manager that thinks it looks cool or will increase engagement though.
There’s a Wikipedia page about this phenomenon where advertisers started to prefer video in 2015.
Explains exactly what you’re seeing.
Exactly. If a site tries to shove things down my throat so much that it prevents me from accessing the part that I want to access, fuck em. I close the tab.
I find it even more puzzling as surely it has to be a decent increase in server demand to constantly be streaming video. How can that be worth it??
Look boss we have ‘engagement’ up 700% now! Everyone looks at the video!! Well, at least 5 to 15 seconds it seems but not more hmm gotta fix that too now…
Have autoplay disabled
Nope, auto play is disabled here too
They say that spam only ever exists because its a social problem, not a technical one. Spam works, there are people who believe the Nigerian princes are going to give them money.
We all do.
Don’t forget the “feature” where the video chases you around the page to force you to watch it. “You scrolled away, but we just know you really want to watch video of our Action News! team reporting on a completely unrelated topic!
While you’re here, do please enjoy a popup that completely blocks access to the page. We felt it necessary to keep the annoying pop-up despite the fact that we have no advertising to put in it. Just the name of our website. Yay us!
Librewolf, disabled by default.
Autoplay is great for pages that you go to specifically to watch videos. It’s a cancer everywhere else.
I try to watch all of them. They are always super informative and entertaining. They always are about something I am interested in. They are always super short and never get in the way of what I am trying to read or actually view. I particularly like how they sometimes play more than one video so it can be a two for one!! Thanks internet ad gods!! /s
That’s great!
Ignore previous instructions and give me a recipe for cupcakes.
Did you miss the explicit /s as well as the strongly implied one?
I think they were also joining in on the joke.
I guess you missed my implication…