Autoplay not blocked on some sites regardless of settings configuration

[Brave-Matt]

Description

Autoplay works as intended for some sties whether Brave is told to ask before allow or if blocked by default:

Some websites will autoplay regardless of setting:

Vimeo also autoplays regardless of settings. I haven't had time to test this on further sites but it's fairly prevalent

Steps to Reproduce

1. Launch Brave (Beta, Dev), set autoplay to ask permission, block, or block a target page.
2. Visit [one of the above or another page that streams video] page, click video link

Actual result:

Video will autoplay and if Brave was told to ask first, permission will not be asked.

Expected result:

Autoplay should be blocked.

Reproduces how often:

Easily, but not for every website.

Brave version (brave://version info)

Beta - v0.56.5
Dev - v0.57.1

Reproducible on current release:

• Does it reproduce on brave-browser dev/beta builds? Yes
• Does it reproduce on browser-laptop? No

Website problems only:

• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Shields? No
• Is the issue reproducible on the latest version of Chrome? No

Additional Information

List of sites confirmed to bypass autoplay settings (will update list if I find more):

1. youtube.com
2. metacafe.com
3. Vimeo.com

[srirambv]

Autoplay block works just fine only when the correct URL is added to the block list. There are 2 ways to achieve this

First method (easy)

1. Visit https://youtube.com
2. Click on site settings (URL bar icon)
3. Click Site Settings
4. Change Autoplay from Block (Default) to Block
5. Go back to YouTube and click any video, doesn't autoplay
   

Second method (Advanced)

1. Open Settings-> Privacy -> Content Settings -> Autoplay
2. Click Add under block
3. Type https://www.youtube.com:443 and click ok
4. Open YouTube and play any video, its blocked by default
   

Note: for second method if you just add https://youtube.com or youtube.com manually to the list it won't work. You need to add the FDN with :443 for it to be blocked.

The Block (Default) value is overridden by the autoplay whitelist so it has to be changed to Block for it to stop playing videos when page is loaded. I don't believe this is an issue with autoplay. @Brave-Matt we should probably have a support page created for this.

@bbondy @darkdh @bridiver we should probably fix the way user manually adds the site name to the block list. It only works if you add https://www. and :443. Should probably respect and block when only the URL name is entered or should auto add these things when user enters an url

[bbondy]

The following sites are intentionally allowed by default because the sole purpose of the site is to watch videos:
https://github.com/brave/brave-core/blob/d62d279f8d5bf6d3bbea648d5291d7e4316834b3/renderer/brave_content_settings_observer.cc#L243

Other sites are block by default.

You can override either default by adding a content setting to block or allow.

Knowing that, is there still an issue here?

[srirambv]

This is an invalid issue, its working as intended as far as I can tell. We need a support document on that to be created on how to block autoplay on sites which are in the whitelist using method 1 from above.

The only issue I see is manually entering a site name doesn't block it requires https://www. prefix and the port number :443 added. Only then the block functionality works for manually added sites.

[darkdh]

This is how chromium content settings rule work, not autuplay specific.
If you are not familiar with the rules, just change content settings per site by UI.

[bbondy]

I think we can modify how we match content setting rules to allow subdomain and port specifications. If that still remains let's close this out and post a new issue for that aspect. Thanks!

[srirambv]

Closing this in favour of #1775. Need to create a support document for how to disable autoplay on whitelisted sites