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Firefox Mozilla IT Technology

Firefox To Block Auto-Playing Audio Starting March 2019 (zdnet.com) 85

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Starting with Firefox 66 -- scheduled for release on March 19, 2019 -- Mozilla plans to block auto-playing audio on both desktop and mobile -- a feature it began to test on Nightly builds last year. The new rule will apply to any website that plays audio without user interaction in advance -- such as a user clicking a button. The audio autoplay ban will apply to both HTML5 audio and video elements used for media playback in modern browsers, meaning Firefox will block sound coming from both ads and video players, the most common sources of such abuse. Mozilla's move comes almost a year after Chrome took a similar decision to block all auto-playing sound by default with the release of Chrome 66 in April 2018. Microsoft similarly announced plans to block auto-playing sounds in Edge, but the feature never made it to production.
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Firefox To Block Auto-Playing Audio Starting March 2019 More

Firefox To Block Auto-Playing Audio Starting March 2019

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  • Video (Score:5, Informative)

    by jwhyche ( 6192 ) on Monday February 04, 2019 @04:59PM (#58069992) Homepage

    What about video? That is just as bad, if not worse. An how about blocking the ability for a video to self extract its ass from a frame and chase my ass down the page.

    • True. And imagine all the wasted bandwidth that WE pay for when these videos are preloading in the background...

    • There's actually a setting to block that in the current release of Firefox

      https://support.mozilla.org/en... [mozilla.org]

      It just stopped working properly a few releases ago.

      • I run with noscript and I block all of the ad networks. I can't remember the last time I saw an autoplaying video. I didn't even know that feature existed or was broken.

    • Blocking silent video is a hard problem (Score:4, Informative)

      by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepples.gmail@com> on Monday February 04, 2019 @05:49PM (#58070260) Homepage Journal

      Blocking automatic playback of audio will block automatic playback of video with audio. Blocking automatic playback of silent video is a much harder problem. Just blocking MP4, WebM, and GIF animations is not enough, as a site can provide fallbacks that use script or even pure CSS. Some Slashdot users claim to have used extensions to block video, but none of them seem to block all methods in my test suite [pineight.com].

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luthair ( 847766 )
        I don't think most people here would consider gifs or swapping images as video.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tepples ( 727027 )

          Even if you might not consider GIF or motion JPEG to be video, an ad network might. If an ad serving script detects that the browser is blocking MPEG-4 or WebM playback, it could seamlessly fall back to GIF or motion JPEG.

        • I don't think most people here would consider gifs or swapping images as video.

          You're right. Most people here would consider it far worse as it is a video consuming far more bandwidth and resources.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Do many sites actually use the hard to block techniques in your test suite though? I note that the smallest one is 2.5x larger than the basic MP4 video file version, and that ratio increases exponentially with the length of the video. Seems like a lot of effort and bandwidth just to play back something that they know the user doesn't want to see.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tepples ( 727027 )

          Do many sites actually use the hard to block techniques in your test suite though?

          I'm not aware that they do. But if use of video blocking functionality in browsers or browser extensions becomes more common, I imagine that they are likely to.

          Seems like a lot of effort and bandwidth just to play back something that they know the user doesn't want to see.

          The ad server uses cheap wired bandwidth, and its operator doesn't care that viewers are behind a more expensive cellular connection. Its operator cares only about impressions and how well those impressions are matched to interests inferred from surveiling each viewer's browsing history. Besides, the pure CSS JPEG filmstrip is 0.59 MB, or less than o

    • Re:Video (Score:5, Informative)

      by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Monday February 04, 2019 @07:13PM (#58070692)

      >" What about video? That is just as bad, if not worse."

      You can already do this in Firefox (blocking autoplay of ALL regular video, regardless of muted or not). And you can do it in many versions, including the current. But it requires a setting in about:config (Firefox is the only browser I know of so far that allows blocking autoplay of muted video, and no addon/plugin is needed):

      media.autoplay.default=1
      media.autoplay.enabled.user-gestures-needed=false
      media.autoplay.allow-muted=false

      Although it will break some sites (I find in practice it is a rare thing, though). The Firefox UI currently includes no way to set the first two of the above, you must use about:config.

      Yes, there are some nasty ways around this that some bad sites could still use. To improve further, make sure to block the playing of animated GIF/PNG/WEBP, too (note there is no per-use control for this, unfortunately):

      image.animation_mode;once (if you want to play it once only, no looping) or
      image.animation_mode;none (never play it at all)

    • An how about blocking the ability for a video to self extract its ass from a frame and chase my ass down the page.

      Doing so would break the layout system used by an incredible amount of the internet. So no. #wontfix

  • What about those Windows repair scams? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    You mean we aren't going to be able to hear the "Your computer has many virus on it. Call Windows Support immediately at 800-555-1212 or we will be forced to deactivate your Microsoft"? What a shame!

    • I know... I was pulling my hair out for hours until I realized I'm not running anything Microsoft.
      Shew, what a relief!

  • For The Love of God, Video Next! (Score:4)

    by RonVNX ( 55322 ) on Monday February 04, 2019 @05:27PM (#58070146)

    Autoplay *anything* has to be stopped.

  • I have autoplay for video and audio turned off in Firefox, and ever since they went to "quantum", this stuff actually works.

    1. In your address bar, put about:config.
    2. In about:config search, autoplay
    3. media.autoplay.default;1
    4. media.autoplay.enabled;false

    Enjoy your lack of autoplay, even in obnoxious sites like cnn and youtube. No extensions needed.

  • Give the web page back to the user and the browser.
  • Hate is such a strong word, yet needs a helping adverb, such as "FN hate."

  • Firefox blocked my audio several years ago (Score:3)

    by mea2214 ( 935585 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @01:36AM (#58071902)
    ... when they stopped support for ALSA. It's kind of a feature actually. I fire up Chrome if I need to hear something.
  • This enhancement is appreciated.

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