Facebook users with limited data plans should take action today to turn off autoplay videos when using their phone’s cellular connection to avoid wasting data on videos they won’t watch and potentially paying more for a higher data plan.
In December, Facebook updated the apps to automatically start playing videos in the news feed when a user scrolls through recent updates. While there is no sound to offend users, this can quickly contribute to higher data usage by the Facebook app, forcing users to overpay between $10 and $15 a month or upgrade to a higher data plan.
It can. This is enough to buy a new iPhone or high-end Android smartphone.
Users are complaining about Facebook’s autoplay videos showing videos they don’t want to see and using costly data.
on devices used by Must Be Mobile staff and family members Facebook is responsible for a lot of mobile data usage and a staff member increased the data plan for the Share Everything plan with multiple users in the last two months to accommodate higher data usage. On one device this might not make a huge difference, but that may be why a normally comfortable plan with three users on LTE per month is slightly over the threshold.
Facebook users who want to avoid wasting money or data on videos they don’t watch should take steps to stop Facebook autoplay videos on iPhone or Android. Users can control these settings on iPhone or Android without logging into Facebook on a computer. Facebook has no way to stop videos playing automatically on WiFi, but Facebook at least allows users to turn them off on cellular.
There is no downside to turning off autoplay for Facebook videos, as users can tap any video to play it over cellular, similar to the app allowed before this feature arrived.
Save data by turning off Facebook autoplay ads on iPhone.
Go to on iPhone. This quick toggle will help you save data.
Open it on Android. Again, this should stop Facebook autoplay videos on any Android device.
Turn off Facebook autoplay video to save data.
Some users are switching to the new Facebook Paper app, in part because videos don’t autoplay when browsing Facebook News Feed.
In addition to using extra data, Facebook users are complaining about videos that autoplay for other reasons, including distractions, seeing things they don’t want to see, and more.
Facebook needs to stop this autoplay feature of videos. No one should have seen what I just saw. I’m nauseous.
— Scot Woodman (@scotwoodman) February 9, 2014
dear @Facebook – Autoplay videos are a silly idea. I didn’t want to start the morning by putting the chicks through the blender, but I had no choice.
— Ryan Thomas (@R_ThomasB) February 4, 2014
Convinced that Facebook’s new video autoplay feature only selectively plays the meanest videos imaginable
— Andrea Gompf (@AndreaGompf) February 4, 2014
Is there a way to turn off Facebook’s autoplay feature on videos? There are some things I just don’t want to see. 🙁
— KaCee Adams (@WhereisKaCee) February 3, 2014
Where are all the parasite lawyers when Facebook thinks it’s okay to strip away bandwidth with autoplay videos. PFFT.
– Sequester Villain (@Megamattster) February 9, 2014
Users also complain about seeing many other disturbing scenes unintentionally in Facebook autoplay videos.
For now, Facebook autoplay videos will continue using data silently and showing users what they don’t want to see. Frustrated users can tell Facebook what they think about autoplay videos. Facebook feedback section.
