uBlock Origin filter kills TechCrunch's autoplay videos for good
uBlock Origin filter to block autoplay videos in TechCrunch
Every TechCrunch article autoplays a JW Player video mid-post, and hiding it just leaves the player running in the background. This filter blocks the JW Player and Connatix scripts outright so the video never loads, then uses cosmetic rules to hide the empty box. It works in the full MV2 version of uBlock Origin on Firefox, not uBO Lite. If TechCrunch changes video vendors, the hiding rules may still work but the network rules will need updating.
Hiding it isn't enough, because the player keeps running in the background.
- ghtjason
Firefox's built-in "Block Audio and Video" in Settings -> Autoplay seems to do a good enough job for most sites (with exceptions whenever it breaks something).
- thetallgeek
The first thing I do when I get access to any computer is install uBlock. A friend comes for tech support, first install then anything else.
- Jakob
Disabling JavaScript by default makes this a non-issue on most sites. Just checked TechCrunch and it’s great without it. Likely like the designer intended.
On iOS, Brave browser makes toggling JS particularly easy.
90% of my mobile web browsing is without JavaScript. It’s much faster, cleaner, safer. And for the occasional website that needs JS, I can toggle it.
Similar to many here in the thread, I then tend to not visit sites anymore that require JS/are too bloated.
- Good4boothee
Last time I tried to manually block some autoplay video with ublock I ended up with invisible video, that still started to play sound, sometime after page loaded. Maintaining filter lists is thankless job, at least looking at ublock github issues tab, where people complain about broken filters few minutes after target page made some changes.
- NietTim
I've just stopped visiting websites that make it impossible to read their articles. It has gotten completely ridiculous.