1553217 - Change global autoplay video default setting to false

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

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

Description

[Ryu]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/60.0

Expected results:

There are many sites that abuse auto playing of videos and it is no longer possible to trust page creators judgement on whether a video should auto play or not. Set this value so it globally defaults to false and overrides any html telling a video to autoplay. Now when html code conflicts with the global auto play setting like this, it should create a small warning bar across the top like you see for other types of warnings now. This warning bar will basically say the site is asking for permission to auto play. If you say it can permanently auto play then on that site only, it will ignore browser global settings and auto play.

The other reason for this change is because the Tor browser which tries have everyone on as similar fingerprint as possible for anonymity will be able to pass down this change and have their auto play turned off. Having someone change their global autoplay setting in the tor browser manually allows websites to fingerprint them easier.

Comment 1

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

We already have blocked any video by default since 66, the global setting is to block autoplay. So I'm not sure what you are asking for.

Comment 2

[Ryu]

(In reply to Alastor Wu [:alwu] from comment #1)

We already have blocked any video by default since 66, the global setting is to block autoplay. So I'm not sure what you are asking for.

I am not asking for a block auto play global variable because as you said, it is already in FireFox. What I am asking for is for the default setting to be shipped with Firefox browser to be set to block autoplay. This is a request to change default setting. As I mentioned, it solves the problem of websites abusing autoplay all the time and it allows the Tor browser to have this same setting set. Tor browser cannot change it as it would make fingerprinting easier but if Firefox as a whole changes it, it will not make fingerprinting easier.

Comment 3

[Ryu]

(In reply to Alastor Wu [:alwu] from comment #1)

We already have blocked any video by default since 66, the global setting is to block autoplay. So I'm not sure what you are asking for.

Also Firefox Quantum 66.0.3 does not stop autoplay by default.

Comment 4

[Ryu]

(In reply to Alastor Wu [:alwu] from comment #1)

We already have blocked any video by default since 66, the global setting is to block autoplay. So I'm not sure what you are asking for.

Replied to wrong person. Firefox Quantum 66.0.3 does not block autoplay by default.

Comment 5

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

We have shipped block autoplay by default since 66, but we used Normandy to roll out the pref changes step by step, so there was some delay between different users, but we have confirmed that now all fx66 users have blocking by default after updating their firefox. In addition, starting from 67, we have shipped blocking autoplay by setting the global pref, so every fx67 users can enjoy this feature by default.

Comment 6

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

Per comment5, we have turn the pref on by default in bug1542921. So close this bug.