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by jaredsohn 969 days ago
For Facebook some videos require you click on it to get the progress bar and annoyingly you then have to click the unmute button to hear it.

Related - if you search Google for a video and it finds a video on a Youtube /search page it will play it but it pauses when you tab away from it. If you want to listen to it in the background you need to move the tab to another window or open YouTube and probably watch an ad.
2 comments
kypro 968 days ago
I think this might be related to autoplay. A video can only auto play if it's muted and I think in some cases browsers require you also interact with the video to play it so they might be forcing a click to get to the progress bar or something.
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jaredsohn 968 days ago
Yeah, sounds right. But Facebook could still show progress bars for videos on all of their pages.
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badpun 968 days ago
OMG. It seems that tech follow exactly the path of the media (TV, newspapers)- if we were paying customers, the tech would be tailored to our needs. But, since we aren't, the tech is tailored to needs of advertising, which leads to bizzare aberrations such as this one. Similarly, free-to-play/pay-to-win games' design is not about the player getting the best experience, but about compelling them to spend as much on in-game purchases.

It's a shame we are such cheapskates that we prefer to suffer such crappy tactics instead of paying for a decent service or content.

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