Instagram makes a play to force you to watch video ads

Instagram announced earlier this month that it will begin serving in-feed advertising before the end of the year, and the Facebook-owned photo and video app has made a subtle, but important, change after it removed the option to switch off auto-play for videos on iOS. (The Android app retains an option to disable auto-play entirely, for now.)

The option is taken out by a seemingly minor update to the app that covers “performance updates and other improvements,” but lists no specific changes. Following the update, users who did not allow videos to pre-load in their feed are left only with a choice to always allow pre-play or restrict it to when they are on Wi-Fi connections only — presumably because of the data charges/usage that auto-playing videos can incur.