Could you clarify your position on muted video autoplay?

Description

Muted video autoplay is an important GIF replacement use case.

<!-- example of muted video autoplay -->
<video autoplay loop muted playsinline src="test.mp4"></video>

Animated GIF images are very expensive in terms of bandwidth and energy use, so websites should be allowed to use silent videos instead, to preserve their users’ data and battery.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Visit https://output.jsbin.com/bacukon/quiet.

Actual result:

The muted video doesn’t start playing automatically, and Brave shows an “autoplay was blocked” message in the URL bar.

Expected result:

The muted video should be allowed to play. All major browsers allow it.

Brave version (brave://version info)

0.59.34 Chromium: 72.0.3626.81 (Official Build) (64-bit)

Reproducible on current release:

I tested both in the stable version and Dev version:

0.61.7 Chromium: 72.0.3626.81 (Official Build) dev (64-bit)

Website problems only:

• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Shields?

No. The autoplay blocking seems to be in effect even without Shields.

• Is the issue reproducible on the latest version of Chrome?

No. Chrome (and other major browsers) allow muted video autoplay.

Additional Information

Please clarify your position on muted video autoplay. It’s an important replacement for animated GIFs, which do auto-play in Brave without issues. If Brave allows animated GIFs but not <video muted>, some websites will be encouraged to choose the former, which is a bad outcome for users.

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Update on Dec 25, 2020: I’ve moved the demo page from my website to JS Bin.

[Murgatroyd314]

Strongly oppose whitelisting muted autoplay. I don’t want ANY autoplaying video, with or without sound. I’d love to be able to stop the GIFs, too.

[PTaylour]

Could perhaps argue that the Ask when a site wants to autoplay media (recommended) popup is more distracting than the average autoplaying muted video.