Videos
that audio play have been becoming common on several websites. Many
of us just consider them a nuisance that we are willing to put up
with when we go to our favorite social, sports, news or other sites.
With the growing number of mobile users auto-play videos have causing
excessive data usage has become a big problem. Facebook has been the
biggest with all of the ice bucket challenge
videos that have been flooding news feeds over the last month.
“We’ve
seen many complaints from people who have been stung with data bills
after exceeding their monthly allowance and who believe it to be
because of Facebook autoplaying videos,” reported
MoneySavingExpert.com.
When
a spokesperson from Facebook finally addressed this growing issue he
did admit that auto-play is a default setting. He goes on to mention
that they strive to keep data consumption low so it should not be
that much of a problem.
"Only
if people stop to watch the video do they consume more data," says a
Facebook spokesperson in a statement mailed to CBS. "We want to
make sure that videos consume as little data as possible and that
people can control what they play automatically."
When
they log on and scroll down over the videos it starts playing and
continues as long as any part of the video is still showing on the
screen. The user might be reading a post below the video but racking
up chew your monthly data allowance while the video plays on. Unless
you have an unlimited data plan this can quickly put you over your
monthly allowance and rack up a huge bill.
"I
went over my data limit for the first time in May," says user
Caroline Greenhaigh Baxter. "I turned off Facebook videos and
haven't been anywhere near my limit since."
The
good news is that there is an easy fix to the problem so that you can
still log in to Facebook to keep up on your friend's status. You can
simply go to settings and switch the auto-play to either wi-fi only
or off altogether. To make these changes on an android device go to
settings → app settings → general setting → auto-play or if you
have an Apple device you go to settings app → Facebook → settings
→ auto-play.
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