HELP! All DailyMotion videos now autostarting

  • Unknown's avatar
    dawntreader72014 · Member ·

    I’ve been blogging on WordPress.com for nearly 10 years and it’s been good for me. I have over 300 subscribers. But just recently (around mid-February I think), all my hundred-odd embedded DailyMotion videos have suddenly begun autostarting. Example:

    https://ethicsandspirituality.wordpress.com/2014/11/11/was-picasso-spiritual-part-2/

    This is a DISASTER, especially for posts like the above where a few DailyMotion videos are interspersed with text and images. As you would see in Firefox, all the videos scattered throughout the post now autostart simultaneously! This creates a cacophony and instantly drives away visitors. Also, I think the Googlebot interprets this as some sort of abuse or malware. I believe my site is being penalized. Views suddenly dropped about 50%, as if off a cliff.

    I want to stress that none of these videos were ever set to autostart. I have not edited any of the posts, nor edited the videos or changed any settings anywhere. It appears that someone at WordPress or DailyMotion has changed something somewhere, causing all embedded DailyMotion videos to autostart. This is a serious problem, and I’m asking Staff to please investigate and find a solution. I know of nothing I can do as an end user to solve this problem. If there is, please let me know.

    Thanks very much for your help. The DailyMotion player API is here:

    https://developers.dailymotion.com/guides/getting-started-with-web-sdk/

    I’m not a coder or developer, so wouldn’t know how to apply it to fix the issue.

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    dawntreader72014 · Member ·

    No help after 3 weeks. I’m adding addt’l info, re-adding modlook to the tags, and explaining a workaround which I’d prefer not to have to use.

    The DailyMotion autostart bug seems to affect posts where the video was embedded using traditional Method #1, i.e. simply pasting the video URL on its own line, as instructed by WordPress.com support docs of the period:

    https://web.archive.org/web/20140920235202/http://en.support.wordpress.com/videos/dailymotion/

    That method worked fine for at least 9-1/2 years, but suddenly around mid-February 2024, DailyMotion videos which were embedded using the paste URL method began autostarting.

    According to my research, this bug does not seem to affect DailyMotion videos which were embedded using the shortcode method. So if your site is being badly bitten by the autostart bug (as mine is), one annoying, painstaking, time-consuming workaround is to manually edit each post affected. For each DailyMotion video, make note of the URL, delete the URL, and substitute the corresponding shortcode for the same video. Example:

    DELETE THIS:
    “https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x260fp0”

    REPLACE WITH:
    “[dailymotion x260fp0]“

    (Don’t use quote marks.)

    Once you’ve finished replacing them all, then hit UPDATE. Now test the edited post. The DailyMotion videos should no longer autoplay.

    This worked for me in light testing, but I dread having to manually edit each post affected by the bug, going back to posts I made in 2014. Staff, couldn’t you please make it easier?

    For example, I NEVER use autostart, so I would be happy if all my DailyMotion embedded URLs could be globally changed to shortcodes.

    Or if you could find a way to fix the bug, so that DailyMotion videos embedded by the paste URL method revert to their traditional civilised behaviour, that would be great too.

    Thank you in advance for your kind attention.

    Note: I made a private post with videos testing & confirming the above workaround. Did not want to push it to my subscribers, but maybe it’s visible to Staff:

    https://ethicsandspirituality.wordpress.com/2024/03/20/test-1-private-test-of-dailymotion-videos/

  • Unknown's avatar
    dtm666 · Member ·

    Very much appreciate this (hopefully) temporary fix, as I’ve been in the process of switching over to WordPress and knowing that most of my older posts, which feature Dailymotion embeds that will now start automatically as soon as they load – and for what it’s worth, I absolutely DESPISE autostarting videos on websites outside of the service itself, especially if it’s video that I have no interest in watching – is somewhat discouraging. Here’s hoping that this bug gets a more permanent fix in the near future, but for now, this is something I can use to fix things in the short term. So thanks for that.

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