On mobile devices, all videos that begin playing as they appear on the screen will have been downloaded in advance when the device was connected to WiFi — meaning this content will not consume data plans, even if you’re not connected to WiFi at the time of playback
Off topic, but this idea that bandwidth has to be carefully thought about and rationed, and resulting avoidance of innovation that uses bandwidth - not that ads are that innovative, but there are many similar situations - is why unlimited bandwidth really has significant benefits, even if the argument that metered bandwidth encourages providers to increase capacity is probably sound.
Yeah, but those are a pretty small minority. A lot of apps have the courtesy check of "don't download songs (photos/videos, whatever) until you're on WiFI". At some point an app has to assume it's safe to download assets, and when you're on WiFi is a pretty safe assumption.
I wonder if this is how the functionality works in Instagram. I was pretty disappointed last week when a video auto-played while I was using my data (200mb per month plan).
If not, then it'd be nice if they could try to stay consistent across platforms.