We don’t tend to have too many disagreements with our ad suppliers, but one thing we really don’t like is adverts that autoplay sound. Sure, we have to display adverts to pay for the increasingly large servers, but ones that start shouting some Daz washing powder at you without you actually hitting “play” are annoying and we don’t allow them.
Facebook, on the other hand, thinks that “autoplay with sound” is the actually the best approach to showing videos within other content, and they plan on changing your Facebook news feed so that all those lovely home-created movies play as you scroll down the page.
Imagine it. Imagine the horror…
Friends kids screaming at a birthday party (scroll), then a badly-filmed video taken at a concert (scroll, scroll), a baby crying (scroll, scroll) and someone doing a bit of karaoke. All auto-played with the sound up. Gah… Smartphones on buses and trains are going to be a new kind of hell, and yet again we have the delightful Facebook to thank.
Videos have autoplayed within the Facebook feed for a while now, but they’re silent unless you click on them. Ad producers and filmmakers adapted to this, adding subtitles or making the video with the intention of viewers seeing it without any dialogue.
The firm has apparently stated that it had received “positive feedback” so far. They tell us that…
With this update, sound fades in and out as you scroll through videos in News Feed, bringing those videos to life.
As people watch more video on phones, they’ve come to expect sound when the volume on their device is turned on..
If you don’t want to play the sound, you’ll need to turn your smartphone sound down or tweak the settings in Facebook. Or you could simply stop using the site, which is my preference.