Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Autoplay videos
Raised as a usability problem by 19 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2010–2026), in 19 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Videos start playing automatically on web pages unexpectedlyUnreviewed
20102026- Videos autoplay and the user must find buttons to stop them2026-04-06
- Browser autoplay-stop setting often fails to actually prevent videos from playing2022-09-27
- Autoplay was forced on and could not be turned off until recently2019-07-31
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 19 complaints
- Videos autoplay and the user must find buttons to stop them2026-04-06
- Video shrinks to corner and keeps playing when scrolled, with a tiny hard-to-hit close button2026-03-16
- Videos start playing while scrolling, and the picture-in-picture close button is too small to dismiss2024-03-31
- Browser autoplay-stop setting often fails to actually prevent videos from playing2022-09-27
- Autoplay was forced on and could not be turned off until recently2019-07-31
- Videos auto-play and follow the reader down the page2019-05-01
- Autoplay media is abused by advertisers and is a terrible experience2019-02-06
- Videos start playing automatically on web pages, unwanted and intrusive for users2019-02-04
- Video needs four clicks to close, with the close button semi-hidden and restarting on each page2018-10-23
- Blocking autoplay also stops manual play, forcing disabling the extension and reloading2017-09-15
- Videos, animations and sounds play automatically, annoying users who did not start them2017-06-16
- Videos start playing unexpectedly, forcing users to hunt for and stop them2017-05-30
- Video ad replays after pausing and scrolls page back, blocking reading2016-12-06
- Videos autoplay on mobile, forcing users to deal with unwanted video while skimming articles2016-02-08
- Ads auto-play loud audio on phones and use bandwidth unexpectedly2015-08-10
- Videos autoplay on pages, pushing unwanted ads at users without consent2015-03-04
- Videos with sound autoplay and that sound is annoying2014-03-21
- Autoplaying video makes sound and the user must hunt for its source2013-10-27
- Tabs start playing audio unasked, so the user must hunt through dozens of tabs to find the source2010-12-10