Does autoplay of a muted video in the background of a website bother you?

[brooke@bikeshed.vibber.net]

@dyani yes it's both visually distracting and an annoying waste of bandwidth for no purpose

autoplay muted video has its place in content that i actually want to see, but not in the background

(and animated ads can just FOAD)

[phl@mastodon.social]

@dyani My pet peeve regarding website video seems to be the little box of a video that you never started nor want to pay attention to, that follows you as you scroll down the article.

If I had started the video and it decides to follow me around it's not a problem.

----

That said (reading some comments made me understand the original idea better) animations are generally distracting and having like a short video clip just for the sake of making the site feel "alive" is not a good idea imo.

[maddiem4@raphus.social]

@dyani it's a very quick shorthand to communicate "I don't care about your internet bandwidth or your attention self-moderation. It's about what *I*, John Q. Website, want."

It's the easiest thing in the world to wait for a cue that the user specifically wants the video to play, and the website *knows* they don't have that consent, or they wouldn't have muted it. They know. So it's about seeing how far they can push boundary they're aware of.

[mshearthwitch@wandering.shop]

@dyani I frequently get visual migraines... when things move around on a website I am incredibly annoyed and more often than not as soon as something moves I close the site.

For me it's an accessibility thing, and it makes me feel like the company doesn't give a shit about people tbh.

[sindarina@ngmx.com]

@dyani I deliberately use a plugin that blocks it, because there's just too many sites that use it badly.

[lottievixen@toot.cat]

@dyani why waste my bandwidth for something meant to be a background piece, also just quite a potential to cause motion sickness or losing track of words depending on visibility of it.

[forschungstorte@tenforward.social]

@dyani It's like getting car sick and very distracted from what you came to do. The worst offenders are video loops under forms people have to fill out, this includes login screens.

[adamshostack@infosec.exchange]

@dyani It makes me unable to read the text on the page because my eyes keep jumping to the motion. So I generally leave unless I have a strong need to stay.

[funcrunch@me.dm]

@dyani

I find any background animations on web pages highly distracting, and disable them whenever possible.

[aspiedan@autistics.life]

@dyani I find it distracting and I feel rushed. I think good sleek and simple design gives a far better impression, and if there are videos I can then choose to watch, I am more likely to linger

[reinald@nrw.social]

@dyani as long as the website does not load more than 50k of Data. And not in the background. Moving backgrounds are horrible.

[me@social.jlamothe.net]

@dyani My server doesn't support polls so I can't vote, but I'll comment. I use older devices. The web is already so bloated that it frequently brings my browser to its knees. Video is usually unnecessarily burdensome on older hardware when it's already juggling so many other things.

I don't mind it being there, but let me decide if I want to play it.

[joby@hachyderm.io]

@dyani It doesn't really bother me personally if it's purely aesthetic (attention-grabbing popover bullshit is another story), but if I were going to do it I would be aware of the fact that it *would* bother plenty of folks. So if I were doing it for some reason I'd at least gate it behind a check for whether the user has the prefers reduced motion setting in their browser.

[adriano@lile.cl]

@dyani I find it distracting, like with anything else that is at the edge of my perception trying to get my attention and that I haven’t activated, when I’m trying to do something.

In the case of video it also kind of shows a disregard for my situation. I could be under a phone data plan that I didn’t want to waste on random video streams. @sindarina

[mavu@mastodon.social]

@dyani adhd-hardmode unlocked.
But maybe the website in question wants to distract you from looking too closely at the provided information and just "click yes already!" In that case: good design choice.

[uncoveredmyths@beige.party]

@dyani

How it makes me feel in the moment varies.

If I am okay health wise, and at my computer, I am annoyed, since I have video play turned off in my browser.

If I have a migraine, it may mean I have to go lay down in a dark room instead of at least reading.

On my ipad is worse. I often use my ipad in the dining room, and I don' know what that video is, and don't want other people to see it thinking I approve of it. (Sorry too many in game ads have been XXX rated lately).

I have often left sites if they have a video, especially if the video pops out and follows the mouse around the screen.

Unless I am on a physical therapy site, or YouTube, I am almost never looking for video.

Ten degrees of vision, hearing loss, and migraines do that to you.

[thufie@social.pixie.town]

@dyani it would mostly make me feel like I wasn't expected to simply view/browse the site, but load something more bandwidth-intensive like a web application. Certain webapp sign in pages do this.

[irina@wandering.shop]

@dyani I usually have all sound off anyway unless I'm actively listening to something, so I probably wouldn't notice. But when I do (because I'm working with the headphones on, for instance; my work involves music typesetting and arranging) I'm NOOOOOOO!!! As bad as having background music in a talk video.

[qwyrdo@disabled.social]

@dyani Videos embedded in websites that autoplay mildly annoy me. I find them to be a useless distraction.

[hexamander@infosec.exchange]

@dyani

Muted is better than not muted (looking at you, news websites) but unless you're a video site and I went looking, autoplay is still bad manners.

I find it annoying at best, distracting and frustrating at worst, like the site owner feels they have to rattle something shiny at me instead of allowing me to focus on the text block I came for.

If I can't close the autoplay video or make it stop, I have been known to either leave and find the information elsewhere, or locate its DOM element and block it programatically.