Starting a week or so ago, my updated iOS facebook app now automatically plays videos that my friends have posted when they appear in my news feed. I did what probably most people did when they discovered this new "feature," I went to the settings and hunted for a way to turn the automatic video play thing off. There isn't any, although there is a switch you can hit to limit the auto play thing to when the phone is on wifi.
There is no conceivable reason that anyone would prefer autoplay video over the ability to decide whether to play a video yourself. Clicking play is just not that hard and a video coming to life is incredibly annoying. Plus the iOS FB app was already an incredible drain on battery power. I assume the autoplay thing will just make that worse.
Once again, Facebook did something making it suck just a bit more.
But apparently the autoplay feature is only a prelude to the next "improvement." Soon, unwelcome video will no longer be limited to the things posted by your friends. Soon Facebook will force you to play commercials. As xkcd says.
I keep wondering how FB's popularity will end. There must be some breaking point that will get some fatal critical mass of users to stop visiting and FB seems determined to find exactly where that breaking point is. I'm not sure why Zuckerberg isn't content with his current business model of getting people to willingly disclose valuable otherwise private information about themselves so he can sell that info to whoever he wants. It seems like a winner to me.
There is no conceivable reason that anyone would prefer autoplay video over the ability to decide whether to play a video yourself. Clicking play is just not that hard and a video coming to life is incredibly annoying. Plus the iOS FB app was already an incredible drain on battery power. I assume the autoplay thing will just make that worse.
Once again, Facebook did something making it suck just a bit more.
But apparently the autoplay feature is only a prelude to the next "improvement." Soon, unwelcome video will no longer be limited to the things posted by your friends. Soon Facebook will force you to play commercials. As xkcd says.
I keep wondering how FB's popularity will end. There must be some breaking point that will get some fatal critical mass of users to stop visiting and FB seems determined to find exactly where that breaking point is. I'm not sure why Zuckerberg isn't content with his current business model of getting people to willingly disclose valuable otherwise private information about themselves so he can sell that info to whoever he wants. It seems like a winner to me.
