News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Play... by unclebucknasty on Sunday November 13, 2016 @06:57AM (#12942935)
Never understood how autoplaying video, especially ads, became an acceptable UX for so many sites. And, it seems that the advent of ad blockers has made this worse. Like, some sites are abusing people as much possible to offset revenue losses.

I was also surprised at how difficult it is to get a modern browser to consistently disable the feature.

Re:Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Play... by bunderbunder on Sunday November 13, 2016 @08:38AM (#12943245)
When it's ads served over an ad network, the site honestly doesn't have a lot of control over what content goes in the ad boxes. Advertisers don't really care, either - it's not their user experience they're garbaging up.
Re:Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Play... by lisivka on Sunday November 13, 2016 @09:09AM (#12943362)
So use an adblocker to give them lesson.
Re:Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Play... by bunderbunder on Sunday November 13, 2016 @09:17AM (#12943393)
Yep, that's what I tend to do. Particularly on my mobile device, where I've settled into a scorched earth policy on ads.

Sucks, though. I like having access to high-quality content, and I believe journalists deserve to get paid for their work. Unfortunately, the Internet at large has long since decided that just paying people for their product over the table is not what the norm should be.

Re:Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Play... by moyta on Sunday November 13, 2016 @10:14AM (#12943677)
It doesn't have to be that way, flattr & the like do provide a viable path to monetary gain for the news industry outside of advertisers. What this means is just like you may have paid for a paper in the past, you should set a budget for flattr and add who you want to support so they are compensated and disincentivized from advertising to you.

Alternatively, if a site does non-aggressive advertising like Dslreports.com, that is quite tolerable. More niche sites are now doing delayed access paywalls too.

Re:Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Play... by hrjet on Sunday November 13, 2016 @12:31PM (#12944434)
Try using a script/media blocker, such as uMatrix, rather than an Ad-Blocker.

The disadvantage will be that sites which require scripts will break on first-access.

The advantages are better overall privacy + security, and that simple static ads won't be blocked and hence those authors will be compensated.

(Edited to better match parent's concerns)

Re:Dear Google, Apple, Mozilla, and MS: Please End Auto-Play... by CamperBob2 on Sunday November 13, 2016 @04:31PM (#12945789)
Or direct action. The gray hats among us might rent or subvert a botnet and use it to click those ads like crazy. Click, click, click. Generate overtly fraudulent clicks by the billions, all day and all night.

That's the only way to shut them down for good -- make it hurt to abuse your visitors.