Jack Marshall, writing for The Wall Street Journal:

Apple Inc. and Google made tweaks to their popular mobile web browsers recently to enable video content to play automatically in web pages, provided audio is muted.

The changes could result in a boost in mobile video consumption for online publishers if they allow their videos to play automatically, and it could unlock new revenue opportunities as a result.

For marketers, the tweaks will enable them to automatically play video content when potential customers visit their websites.

Autoplay means you consume your data plan simply by visiting a site. Some sites hide the video, making it invisible, and others place the video at the bottom of an article, ensuring you’ll need to scroll through the entire article to get to that elusive pause button.

It’s unclear how consumers will react to having videos play automatically on mobile webpages. Some industry observers suggest Facebook’s introduction of autoplay video in its News Feeds has, perhaps, helped people acclimatize to the idea.

But, in addition to potentially being distracting to some web users, autoplay videos could also increase the amount of data people consume through their wireless plans, potentially resulting in extra data charges.

“If you’re visiting a lot of sites with autoplay video then the bandwidth bill will be coming after that,” Mr. Wijering said.

Terrible.