1908830 - Misleading Explanation of Autoplay Settings

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(support.mozilla.org :: Knowledge Base Content, task)

Description

[MarjaE]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:128.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/128.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. Photosensitive users may need to block autoplaying images and videos to avoid migraines, seizures, etc.

2. Users have to track down several different settings.

Actual results:

3. This article is misleading https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/block-autoplay

It claims that "The Block Audio and Video setting will prevent autoplay for all media, including video, even though audio is muted."

This doesn't keep sites from firing animations, or from using hidden triggers, and firing unexpected videos if users mouse across the trigger.

So claiming that the setting "will prevent autoplay for all media, including video, even though audio is muted." is dangerously misleading.

Users have to individually:

a. Block extra animation at the system level, and/or manually set ui.prefersReducedMotion to 1.

b. If sensitive to smooth animation but not flashing, set layout.frame_rate low enough to avoid symptoms, to scroll freely, etc. If sensitive to flashing, set layout.frame_rate low enough to avoid symptoms. If especially sensitive, the minimum value of 1 may be too high.

c. Set image_animation.mode to none.

d. set media.autoplay.blocking_policy to 2 and media.autoplay.default to 5.

Expected results:

There is a much better, but still incomplete, explanation here:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1321021

Previous report for the same bug:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1642507

Bug report for the settings, rather than the docs:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1907746

Comment 1

[Krzysztof]

This article is only about video, gifs and sound files and it's not misleading.

OP could propose a new article about resolving photosensitivity issues.

Comment 2

[MarjaE]

How is it "not misleading"? How is it not dangerously misleading?

Comment 3

[Lucas Siebert]

Content Roadmap link in Asana: https://app.asana.com/0/1203460865189761/1208295593358193/f

Comment 4

[Lucas Siebert]

Task moved to Q1 Firefox Off Train Content Requests https://app.asana.com/0/1203460865189761/1208524582068009/f

Comment 5

[JC]

We generally do not recommend users to edit about:config unless product team authorizes. This has the potential to cause issues with the browser following future updates. As a result we will not be moving forward with this change.

Comment 6

[MarjaE]

It's a safety-critical setting. If you don't want users to turn to about:config, then maybe it would help for about:preferences to include the setting, and for the documentation to be honest about what it takes to actually block autoplay.