What autoplay actually does
Finish an episode on Netflix and you get about five seconds before the next one starts on its own. A countdown wipes across a button that would let you stop it, but stopping requires an action. Not stopping requires nothing. That asymmetry, one option needs a decision and the other just happens, is the entire feature.
Netflix's own help documentation describes this plainly as a setting you can turn off, buried in playback settings rather than presented as a choice at the moment it matters.[2]
What happens when you turn it off
Researchers at the University of Chicago ran an actual experiment on this instead of theorizing about it. They recruited 76 heavy Netflix users, split them into two groups, and had one group disable autoplay while the other kept it on, then tracked real viewing behavior. The group without autoplay watched about 18 fewer minutes per session on average, and reported taking more time between episodes to think about whether they wanted to keep watching.[1] The researchers also found autoplay's effect grew stronger as a session went on, consistent with it mattering most exactly when a viewer is fatigued and least equipped to make a deliberate choice.[1]
Why "convenience" is the wrong frame
Removing a click sounds like a small usability win, the same framing infinite scroll got when it shipped. But a click at the end of an episode isn't friction in the way a broken button is friction. It's a decision point, the moment "keep watching" turns from the default state of a video that's already playing into something you'd have to actively choose. Autoplay doesn't remove an inconvenience. It removes the decision.
Where else this shows up
Netflix didn't invent the pattern, it just measured it clearly. YouTube autoplays the next recommended video after a countdown. Instagram and TikTok don't wait for a countdown at all, the next Reel or the next Short is already playing before you've registered the last one ended. In each case the stopping cue, the natural end of one piece of content, gets replaced with a seamless handoff to the next.
DoomOff's Shorts and Reels toggles work on exactly this seam. Hiding the Shorts shelf and blocking Reels doesn't change what's inside YouTube or Instagram, it removes the surface built to hand you the next one before you've decided you want it. The stopping point comes back because there's no autoplaying next thing waiting to erase it.