When I play a video in Facebook desktop web, it starts muted and I have to click to enable audio:
This doesn't seem to be related to any of the Video settings I can find - I've tried all combinations available and it doesn't change this behaviour:
It's particularly irritating while in a Watch Party, where each new video reverts to muted and I have to click again, missing the start of the sound.
I've made sure Facebook has permission to play audio in Chrome, and tried on Windows and Mac, and on Chrome and Safari. In any case, the video control strip is an overlay added by Facebook, so I'm pretty certain it's being controlled by Facebook and not the browser/OS.
The problem doesn't happen on the mobile web version for me.
Is there a setting that will allow me to watch a Watch Party without having to manually unmute every video in the playlist?
Update: It seems there are at least two different interfaces for watching watch parties on Facebook web... If I click on a notification in my group that "xyz has started a watch party", I get the first interface that has the issue with muting. If instead I click on a previous watch party, I get a different interface with tabs on the right for "comments" and "watch parties" which allows me to see a list of previous watch parties from the group, and if there's one ongoing at the time, I can select it here. This interface shows participants across the bottom with real-time reactions and, crucially, doesn't seem to suffer from the same muting issue. I haven't discovered a way to get directly to this interface without going via an older watch party, and I don't know if it's A/B testing or what's going on, but at least there may be one (circuitous) route for me to avoid the issue for now.