Stream video player embed should not autoplay without user consent
Problem:
As livestream video embed is included on the website it will autoplay without the consent of a user to be counted as a viewer within a stream, various broadcasters abuse this logic by creating silent 1px embeds on third-party domains (wikis, product pages & similar). Not only that unnaturally inflates the viewcount numbers of the streamers in question but as well it hurts statistics and the community of the categories in which said broadcasters streams, in addiction this incredibly hurts users with limited network bandwidth while they try to use said websites where embed is included cause they do not wish to have their data used on the media they have not consented to, which in effect can ruin a twitch reputation as a platform when said users would try to investigate their bandwidth usage.
Possible solution steps:
- Paused livestream video player within embed should not count to live viewer count (possibly already done, but better to mention)
- Disable autoplay from the embeds displaying video of the live stream
- Deprecate the autoplay property from the query string parameters on Iframe src
- Function "play()" from Synchronous JavaScript Playback API should not execute or not be defined until user interacts with an embedded player by themself.
What it solves:
- Removes bad actors who use embed functionality to unnaturally inflate their numbers
- Protects users with limited bandwidth
- Makes sure that EU GDPR laws are maintained
- Protects Twitch reputation for current and future advertisers
