Not everyone uses or has an unlimited internet connection. So when someone posts a link to a page that contains autoplay video, it fucks us over by surprise by sucking our internet credit dry. It is impossible to disable autoplay in either of the two browsers (Chrome & Firefox). Google has been trying for over 10 years to make a disable mechanism for autoplay and so far they cannot handle the job.
I got burnt by this thread, which is not slrplnk.net but it’s an example of a discriminatory nuisance that harms poor people (who likely have bandwidth quotas). It’s also eco-harmful to waste network energy.
Animated GIFs are a similar but complicated problem and should be treated the same. Blocking images does not block animated GIFs, and while it’s possible to automatically stop an animated GIF, it only stops the playing not the fetching.
When I suggest banning “uncautioned” autoplay, I mean to say there is no issue as long as the existence of autoplay is made loud and clear by the author, so thread visitors cannot get burnt by a surprise hit-and-run bandwidth theft.
For phones:
On whatever app you’re using, try disabling in-line preview (varies from app to app, it could be called compact mode, list mode, etc.). That way you’ll see just the thumbnail and you can click in the post to load the image if you wish.
In Jerboa app for Android, videos don’t autoplay and autoplay GIF is an option that is disabled at default.
For desktop web:
That’s a hard ask because most major news websites (skynews, cbc, fox, nbc, etc.) have in-article video and many of them unfortunately have autoplay on.
I do have Autoplay block on my Firefox too btw…
If it were my decision, I’d have a "low-bandwidth news community people can subscribe to, but ultimately, if slrpnk users agree with you then you can make that a rule on your server and browse local only.
I think that community idea is good. Could require reader mode only submissions or require text to be copied in the post body.
Community separation occurred to me, but in such a case it should be the other way around. That is, links that are exclusive or enshitified in various ways should be quarantined in a non-egalitarian community like “walled_gardens” or something. They should not sit around as traps to snuff out people’s bandwidth.
And I wonder if this might be a good moderation action… because not everyone reads the rules. A mod could perhaps non-destructively move a post to a quarantined area and give the author a chance to repost with tags.
Sounds like it needs to be an instance created for this specific goal. Which again, not a bad idea if there’s reasonable demand.
I’m not sure you’ve understood the request. This is a pro-etiquette social move that results in more info for the readers. Good etiquette should not be confined to a single instance but rather it should spread to all forward-thinking instances.
Maybe you’re thinking in terms of a software change? If a Lemmy server were adapted automatically detect and tag various forms of enshitification, it would indeed have to be piloted on specific instance. This is the long-term solution. Ideally, I want to see a long string of symbols next to every URL indicating the kinds of garbage I will step into when following a link. We can do better than Twitter and Reddit… following a link really shouldn’t be a craps-shoot for anyone.
That reminds me of a client-side option I will eventually start tinkering with. There is a blacklist plugin where each user can list a site they do not want to return to again. Though that may not be a good community solution because IIUC each person would still get burnt once on every site before their configuration protects them.