Videos will play on mute by default, advertisements coming ‘in the future’
Taking cues from Vine and Instagram (which it owns), Facebook has begun testing a new feature in its mobile apps that will let some videos automatically play as you scroll past them in the News Feed. The feature works exactly how it does in Vine and Instagram, where any video that has been uploaded will show a thumbnail image in your News Feed, and if you stop scrolling past the video it will begin to buffer and play. As soon as you scroll away, the video stops playing.
Videos are muted by default, but sound will play if you tap the video to view it full screen, where you’ll also have controls to play, pause and scrub to different portions of the video. Facebook says that the ability to have auto-playing videos will be limited to individuals, verified pages and musician or band verified pages at the moment. As for the future possibility of advertisers having automatically playing videos, Facebook says it will explore the possibility “in the future.”
We’re seeing videos start to automatically play in our own News Feed, but Facebook says that auto-play is rolling out slowly to a limited number of users right now.
Source: Facebook