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Facebook Is Testing Continuous Autoplay for Videos

Sit back, relax and enjoy a few hours of ... Facebook videos?

Bacho / Shutterstock

Sit back, relax and enjoy a few hours of … Facebook videos?

The social network is testing a new Netflix-like video feature that automatically plays another video once the one you’re currently watching ends. It’s a step past recommended videos, which Facebook started rolling out in September, and different from regular autoplay videos, which have appeared in News Feed for well over a year.

In this new test, if you don’t click on a “related video” after a certain amount of time following the end of your video (Facebook is testing different lengths), the next video in the queue will start playing on its own.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the company is testing the feature for some users on iOS and Android, but didn’t offer much else.

This is a small update for Facebook, but significant in that it offers a glimpse into how the company sees video moving forward. Not only does it want you consuming more of it — something we’ve known for some time — but it seems to be moving more and more toward YouTube in the process.

In fact, YouTube started rolling out a similar autoplay feature for some videos in February, so the timing of the two products is intriguing.

Of course, more videos on Facebook likely means more video advertising on Facebook, so there may be another motivation here, too.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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