If your website autoplays videos, I hate you.

I’m not sure when people stopped reading, but I think it has a lot to do with the way things are going in the USA. It seems now that every other webpage I load, there is a video that automatically plays.  I don’t even want my video sites like YouTube automatically playing the videos to which I’ve just navigated.

When did this become a thing? It seems to be increasing at an exponential rate as well. I understand that bandwidth for a lot of people has increased significantly as well, especially with fiber being rolled out in more areas, making it easier to deliver video content. This doesn’t factor or account for the tightening of packet policies for metered connections with cell phone companies or the fact that I just plain don’t want to hear news anchors prattle on about whatever subject they’re probably misinforming us about. I want to READ my news. I especially want to read it from as many sources as possible, hopefully with opposing biases, or at least some plethora of biases, so that I can find some modicum of truth somewhere in the middle of the blatant news media propaganda coming from every side of the proverbial political spectrum.

What has made this trend infinitely worse, is now the videos that seem to occupy the top real estate of every new webpage, follows you around the page, superimposing itself on-top of everything else. These types of overlays also restart the autoplay feature, even after I’ve already paused the video at the top. This leads me to around five or six extra clicks to get to the content these providers are obfuscating with videos I didn’t ask to see.

What I’d like to see happen is news aggregates, like Bing, Flipboard, and others start to label or even separate news media better so those of us who wish to actually think about the news we’re reading as we’re dragged through the anxiety inducing grind of another 24 hour news cycle of click bait and ads disguised as content. I’d honestly rather have Microsoft Sam read my news than over half the anchors out there today. The other option would be to hire a real life Cortana to read my news aloud to me… And maybe feed me grapes.