smittywerben on Ask HN: Is YouTube using a dark pattern to prevent background playlist play?

Comment on Ask HN: Is YouTube using a dark pattern to prevent background playlist play?

I haven't experienced this specifically on YouTube, but you may be talking about the Page Visibility API [0]. I've tried to disable it natively in Firefox and Chrome (without extensions) but with no avail. It can even tell if I switch desktops in i3wm. Here's two demos [1][2]. I'm guessing it's saving $$$ on bandwidth. I just want the option to turn it off.

[0] https://www.w3.org/TR/page-visibility-2/

[1] http://daniemon.com/tech/webapps/page-visibility/

[2] https://testdrive-archive.azurewebsites.net/Performance/Page...

rasz 6y

I quickly did something like this for Twitch, seems to work:

    document.hasFocus = function() {
      return true;
    }
    Object.defineProperty(document, 'hasFocus', {value: true})
    
    document.hidden = function() {
      return false;
    }
    //Object.defineProperty(document, 'hidden', {value: false})
    Object.defineProperty(document, "hidden", {get: function() { return false; }
    });
    
    document.webkitHidden = function() {
      return false;
    }
    Object.defineProperty(document, 'webkitHidden', {value: false})
    
    document.addEventListener("focus", function(e) {
      e.stopPropagation();
      e.stopImmediatePropagation();
      e.preventDefault();
      return false;
    }, true);
    
    document.addEventListener("visibilitychange", function(e) {
      e.stopPropagation();
      e.stopImmediatePropagation();
      e.preventDefault();
      return false;
    }, true);

teapot01OP6y

The pause button make sense, force users to focus on the page briefly every now and then to save bandwidth - Netflix does something similar to prevent long running auto-play.

The looping is quite different though, there's no legitimate use for it, and I can't find any controls that would allow you to set a song to auto-repeat. So it's either a bug that they're struggling to fix or an intentional change to make play-lists less functional when you are not watching the platform.

Comments