i'd argue that perhaps the ability to play audio should be permission gated, much like the ability to use webcam/microphone.
However, I'd bet that many people will gladly allow aliexpress to play audio as there are probably videos on the site that people want to play and listen to.
With that said, its possible that this can be only a use once permission. Even if I want to shop at aliexpress if I know they are doing this, I'll be more willing to be bothered every time I want to play a video with audio to approve it if this bothers me.
I would actually love if I could have iOS prompt me to allow certain apps to use the speakers. I hate using an app and suddenly have a video autoplay loudly.
I wish Android had this as well. There are apps where it's difficult-to-impossible to turn all sound off, and I wish I could just tell my phone that this app is just never allowed to use the speakers.
On Samsung Android phones there is a Samsung app that isn't installed by default that allows to individually manage volume/mute per app called SoundAssistant (and few more neat customizations for audio/audio controls).
I don't think many people know about it, it's made by Good Lock Labs which is basically a group of Samsung devs making advanced customization apps: https://galaxystore.samsung.com/detail/com.samsung.android.s...
You access the features from the OS volume control once installed, there's a "..." button.
Always wondered if that also works on non-Samsung phones, but it's quite useful to forever mute an app.
Inside iOS accessibility settings you can turn off “auto-play video previews.” This blocks perhaps 20% of video autoplay; it’s still better than nothing.
Philosophically I hate silent video autoplays just as much as I hate autoplays with audio. One distracts your visual attention, the other distracts your aural attention, and I don’t quite understand why society has normalized silent video autoplay.
This. This needs to be a thing.
To be fair, it shouldn't need to be a thing.
(One should really not tolerate such dodgy software).
The ability to play audio can usually be permission gated with tab muting, however the methods aliexpress use bypass that mechanism completely.
This is the part you should be highlighting aggressively. That’s very uncomfortable
Firefox allows to Block "Audio and Video" (or "Only Audio") from auto playing per domain, including on Mobile.