The Founding Fathers Would Have Hated Autoplay Video

Consider what we know about them.

They were, to a man, obsessed with the question of what a government may do to a person without that person's explicit say-so. They argued about it for years. They wrote it down. They amended it, and then they amended it again, and then they argued about the amendments.

These were people with a finely tuned sense of intrusion.

Now imagine one of them opening a recipe blog.

He is looking for a bread recipe. Between him and the bread recipe stands: a cookie banner, a newsletter modal, a notification permission request, four ad slots that shift the page while he reads, two thousand words about a trip to Vermont, and — the moment his eyes reach the ingredient list — a muted video in the bottom-right corner that unmutes itself and begins describing an unrelated product.

He would not write a strongly worded email. He would not leave a comment.

He would form a committee.

There would be a pamphlet. The pamphlet would be circulated widely. It would be titled something like *On the Tyranny of the Unrequested Video*, it would run to eighty pages, and it would be, we suspect, extremely readable and quite funny in places.

And somewhere in the middle of it, in a sentence we would all be quoting today, he would point out the thing that is actually true: a website that will not wait for you to ask is not serving you. It is processing you.

Anyway. Our site has no autoplay video. You are welcome.