how incredibly frustrating would it be to use something as it is for years and years and years (literally since the product's conception) and after all that time you can no longer use it that way and the developers of it said "we dont think about what you want, bye" and so much as not provide any help whatsoever

its a sad time yeah

a sufficient amount of users have asked for this back in  bug 816547  and  bug 728108 

very difficult to continue using chrome the way it is now but all my sync data is here, I dont want to switch if I dont have to :(

More comments in  bug 728108  asking why this keeps getting unresolved

I'm greatful for anyone that wants to help fix this issue (thats also impacting me too) but want to also strongly recommend other users stop with personal attacks on devs as its not helping our case. 

I would be grateful for any of the following:

-Since autoplay was the default behavior, reenabling it
-Since autoplay was eventually disabled, but still available as a flag, add back the original flag that let us re-enable it
-Since the autoplay flag was replaced with one that's no longer effective, make the new autoplay flag effective again
-Mark as resolved wont fix but provide a sufficient resolution or workaround to this issue

None of these have been satisfied and there continues to be a single point of failure for this, hence the finger pointing and attacks towards a specific developer. Not by me, but complaints from multiple users here. 

When I emailed this chrome developer directly to address the issue (per their request) we reached no satisfactory resolution. They stopped responding to my inquiries and have been silent.

Please re-enable the flag that allows users to autoplay videos in a background tab.

My only guess as to why this is happening only in this browser is google owns YouTube, and if they want us to click on the tab to see the next pre-roll ad before the next video.

I totally understand if that's the case and Google wants to maximize genuine ad impressions, but in my case I have a YouTube Red subscription so there are no ads. If this is the only reason, I wish they would at least give paying customers a way to enable the feature. Otherwise, the only logic I can think of for why this is such an issue is that they are trying to be helpful in making sure people don't get bombarded with autoplaying videos when they don't want to - in which case I don't understand what the logic is for taking the flag functionality away as a work-around for tech savy people that understand the risks and are not only willing, but begging to have that functionality.

I also pay for youtube red, and don't have any ads. I pay for youtube red to have a music experience, and that includes opening things in the background without having to interact with them (because its music, not a video I want to watch)

I no longer wish to pay for youtube red if I can't use it the way I used to. 

Music, either through YouTube or other services is definitely my own primary motivation for wanting and previously using this feature. Speaking of paying for things, my Google Home doesn't stop between every single song and ask me, using a separate device with a screen, to verify if I want to start playing the next song, so why is Chrome forcing us to do this? 
If there is some legitimate technical reason why this is the only browser on the market to force users into this situation I would be happy to hear about it.

after this im . considering stopping my youtube red family subscription, switching to firefox (gross, but yeah) and using adblock. its free 

Why?

Time to open another bug. This is so sad...going to be reporting these devs that maliciously close these bugs

I dont even care that the bug wont be fixed i just wish they would tell us why.

Silence is the most convicting display of their character. I've not gotten any responses from the direct emails to them either. 

Who holds these guys accountable? How do we escalate this?