1542310 - Block autoplay not on by default after updating to 66

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Audio/Video: Playback, defect)

Description

[chsiang]

Steps to reproduce:

1. Go to preferences and update Firefox release from 65 to 66
2. Visit http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/26439244/lebron-offseason-critical-lakershttps:/

Expected results:

1. Video ad would not play
2. Check Preferences> Privacy & Security > Permissions
   "Block websites from automatically playing sound" should be checked

What happened:

1. Video ad played and with sound
2. Check Preferences> Privacy & Security > Permissions
   "Block websites from automatically playing sound" is listed but unchecked

Comment 1

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

Daniel, can you or someone else in QA try to reproduce this issue? Thanks!

Comment 2

[Michael Cooper [:mythmon]]

This sounds like a well known issue with Normandy rollouts. There can be a gap of up to 6 hours after an upgrade in between when a client becomes eligible for the rollout and when the client actually gets the rollout. This shouldn't affect new profiles, only existing profiles.

Comment 3

[Daniel Cicas [:dcicas], Release QA]

Hello,

I investigated this bug and I can reproduce this issue on both Fx 66 and Fx 67.0b8, Nightly is working correctly. This issue can be reproduced on all platforms tested on Windows 10, Ubuntu 18.04 and macOS 10.13

Comment 4

[Bryce Seager van Dyk [:bryce] (he/him) - Not reading bugmail]

:alwu, are there any changes you're aware of that would cause this to impact 66 and 67, but not 68?

Comment 5

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

Hi, Michael,
Is there any way to fix this Normandy issue? Or we need to uplift a patch to change the default preference value on Release?
For now, I'm using Firefox Release 66.0.2, and I still can't see the rollout result.
Thank you.

Comment 6

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

Alastor, can you check telemetry data to see the % of users who have block autoplay enabled?

Comment 7

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

Just as a note, I updated from an older release version (61) to 66.0.2. Autoplay is blocked and I can see a pref "app.normandy.startupRolloutPrefs.media.autoplay.default" set to 1. Is that the pref used by the current SAO?

Comment 8

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

Daniel, if you update and then wait a day or so, do you get the pref turned on from the system addon?

Comment 9

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

We don't have such Telemetry ping to see how many users have enabled the blocking autoplay, and most of our Telemetry pings are opt-out on Release.

Comment 10

[Ritu Kothari (:ritu) (Inactive, please n-i to RyanVM, jcristau, or pascal)]

Based on the trello card for Block AutoPlay and the staged rollout plan (100% by end of week2 on release66), if we are already at 100% rollout of this feature via Normandy and there are no blocking issues, we should consider turning this feature to ON by default (pref-flip) in 66.0.3 dot release to overcome any delay (can be up to 6 hrs) caused by Normandy recipe.

Comment 11

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

I just tried a clean install of 65.0.2, let it update to 66.0.2, had a look at about:preferences and about:config for autoplay prefs, and it was initially not enabled. Within about 5 minutes I saw the normandy-controlled pref appear in about:config. So, from my perspective this is working fine.

Alastor, I don't know why you aren't updating. Have you tried from a fresh install or a clean profile?

Comment 12

[Michael Cooper [:mythmon]]

In this case, there isn't an easy way to avoid this issue within Normandy. Rollouts should always be considered a temporary measure, and for 100% coverage, we need the change to land in tree, like Ritu mentioned in comment 10.

Alastor, is it possible you have Normandy or Telemetry disabled, or that the profile hasn't had a chance to query the Normandy server?

According to this notebook, this rollout has reached 94% of users in the clients_daily Telemetry table, as of 2019-04-08T00:00:00 UTC.

Comment 13

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

After further discussion I think we're seeing the normal range of update times for Normandy rollouts mentioned in comment 2. Since I'm not seeing any user complaints "in the wild" here, I think we can just make sure that the default is set to enabled for 67 (beta and release). I'd rather keep dot release changes for 66 to a minimum.

Comment 14

[Daniel Cicas [:dcicas], Release QA]

Hello,

I'm sorry for the late response. I can confirm that media.autoplay.default was updated to 1 after 4 or 5 minutes, after updating from 65.0.2 to 66.0.3.

Comment 15

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

My Firefox also started block autoplay by default after I updated it to 66.0.3. In addition, we've turned the pref on by default in 67 and 68 in bug1542921. As I think all peopel will eventually get the update (it just takes some time), I will close this bug.