uBlock Origin filter to block autoplay videos in TechCrunch

134 pointsposted 2 days ago
by cornfieldlabs
(cornfieldlabs.github.io)

42 Comments

ghtjason

2 days ago

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).

Aardwolf

a day ago

One issue with Firefox setting is that it assumes too much that you want to disable the audio but don't care about the moving video. I care about the video not autostarting. But when I press play, then I obviously do want audio. Firefox mutes it... So now it requires two or more clicks to properly play

KellyCriterion

2 days ago

I know of a very popular newswebsite in my region which somehow works around this: When overscrolling the video window on their site, ALWAYS the video starts to play - I have the option disabled in FF settings, nontheless its not working in this case :-X

nsoam

2 days ago

That’s interesting. I guess Firefox is taking the scrolling as user interaction, allowing the video to play. There’s a chance Firefox would fix this, if reported.

falsemyrmidon

a day ago

I'd just disable js entirely for that site. And if it breaks it entirely, oh well

KellyCriterion

a day ago

Then I cant browse the comments - which are in reverse the reason Im visiting the site :-)

Tarsul

2 days ago

Does that help with "auto"play & PIP thats triggered by scrolling? I have not managed to completely deactivate PIP videos in Firefox settings/about:config.

neRok

a day ago

you've tried setting media.videocontrols.picture-in-picture.enabled to false? it seems to be enough for me, although about:support still shows "Picture-In-Picture" Add-on (of type app-builtin-addons) enabled.

close04

2 days ago

I keep running into autoplayed videos in Firefox even with all the relevant settings turned up to 11. My solution to this is for the entire website to go straight into the DNS blocklist. TrashCrunch is one of those sites, and for even better reasons than just obnoxious ads.

thetallgeek

2 days ago

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.

KellyCriterion

2 days ago

Years ago I had a discussion with a guy from "AdTech" company: Their companies was pushing out ads on several large websites - he said the first thing on a new computer is an Adblocker to get rid off all the shit his company is distributing across the net :-D

Krasnol

2 days ago

The first thing I do when I get access to any PC is install Firefox, then ublock ;)

The internet has been unbearable without it for years now. I can't imagine having to face it every day as most people do.

Jakob

2 days ago

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.

0x0203

a day ago

I do the same, but with NoScript on Firefox. Unfortunately, thanks to all the AI scraping, many sites are using some sort of bot detection, wish fails unless you have JS enabled. It's getting harder and harder to use the web without JS. Cloudflare's bot detection will also flag you for having certain privacy features enabled on your browser, which is highly irritating.

The modern web is getting worse by the day. Not coincidentally, I find myself using it less and less.

DavideNL

a day ago

Note that an alternative in those situations is using uBlock Origin instead of NoScript, and then configure "Medium Mode" [1]

So, when blocking javascript (which uBo can also do of course) does not work, enable javascript with Medium Mode (blocks 3th party scripts and frames.)

(personally i use Librewolf.)

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode#medium-...

0x0203

a day ago

I also use uBo. And no script lets me select only the domains I want to allow, so I don't think there's much, if any difference in that regard. I'm mainly just irritated that I have to enable js at all since allowing it to get past a lot of bot checks means they also get to run all their other js hosted on that domain.

I also run librewolf on several machines, but have even more issues with cloudflare then. It's all just sad all around.

joshspankit

19 hours ago

Actually, now that you mention it… Maybe it’s time for society to use gopher or some other ancient protocol

chneu

a day ago

>Not coincidentally, I find myself using it less and less.

Yup. Its getting to the point where folks send me links and I just reply "I don't or can't use that website" and I move on. Nothing is lost, I feel.

HelloUsername

2 days ago

If you just want to read the text body of an article, there's plenty third party scripts you can block on Techcrunch through the advanced settings in uBlock Origin:

cloudflare.com

connatix.com

d34azmi6bxg5fz.cloudfront.net

videos-cloudfront-usp.jwpsrv.com

facebook.net

google.com

googletagmanager.com

gstatic.com

jwpcdn.com

jwplatform.com

jwplayer-dualstack.map.fastly.net

assets-jpcust.jwpsrv.com

jwplayer.com

jwpltx.com

jwpsrv.com

parsely.com

sail-horizon.com

servenobid.com

wp.com

Good4boothee

a day ago

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.

account42

a day ago

I wish there was a setting to make audio and video opt in per site. Most random sites have no business using anything but text and the occasional image plus whatever fancy stylesheets keep their designers busy.

NietTim

2 days ago

I've just stopped visiting websites that make it impossible to read their articles. It has gotten completely ridiculous.

bborrez

2 days ago

In uBlock Origin, I allow everything except 3rd party frames, then I use uMatrix to whitelist acceptable domains and requests. These are the only privacy add-ons I use and they are amazing.

butz

a day ago

Every decent web browser must implement controls to disable download and autoplay of any media, be it video, audio or even gif images. And very neat feature would be to inform user how much bandwidth this media file will consume before clicking play button. And using scrollbar should not be considered as an interaction with website that enables autoplay.

lakeviewterrace

2 days ago

The solution for shitty web design is not to come up with clever workarounds.

The solution is to stop visiting these sites entirely, as traffic emboldens them further.

It's like deliberately going into The Worst Toilet In Scotland so you can read the news scribbled on the walls.

timesupaders

2 days ago

All of the ad-driven internet is on a timer anyways. We-re less than 5 years away from the release of the AdsAreSlurs Browser, the browser that uses a small local model to actively remove all advertisements from web content.

bulbar

a day ago

You think that can be done just as fast as reliable?

Why would that be is own browser instead of a plugin? And his will it accumulate significant market share?

It's possible we will see an "AI first" browser (whatever this means) that gets significant market share. But getting rid of ads will not be a driver for that.

arijun

2 days ago

Is this satire I’m not understanding? We already have Firefox+ublock that does that.

0points

2 days ago

uBlock does not contain a local LLM, but relies on manual human labor.

arijun

2 days ago

Sorry my question was “what does using an LLM do that ublock doesn’t?”

I see you’re saying that it obviates the needs for manual central curation. But surely we would move to (stronger) LLMs doing the curation centrally while using existing infrastructure, before trying to insert a LLM round-trip before every page fetch.

Gareth321

a day ago

I am not the same user but I agree with their premise.

Centralised curation will have its time but marketers will move to systems which are unique to each visitor. Think 30 second ads which are unique to each visitor, built on their shopping history, social media comments, search, etc. These systems are currently prohibitively expensive to build and deploy, but they won't be with cheap LLMs. YouTube is already experimenting with ads inside streams, for example. Those are very difficult or impossible to deterministically block. Sites will get very good at agentically evading deterministic adblocking software. This is where local LLMs will shine. Consider the case of YouTube in-steam ads. The LLM could probabilistically determine that the current frames are ads (even though this particular ad is 100% unique to that visitor, and has never appeared in any ad database before), then black out the section of the screen/audio while it plays. Or fast forward until it finds where the segment ends. All in real-time, locally determined.

It does become a strange cat and mouse game in the future, but I feel quite strongly that ad blocking will win. Users will have intelligent, autonomous systems on their devices which can curate and block content as desired.

sandworm101

a day ago

>> what does using an LLM do that ublock doesn’t

It burns through tokens/electricity.

In all seriousness, far too many people think "throw AI at it" will solve every tech problem. AI remains inefficient, power hungry and mercurial. Replacing an adblocker or firewall with a constantly-running AI is as efficient and useful as rocket motors on a car.

kotaKat

2 days ago

Any solutions for eBay? The super hostile "eBay Live" videos intertwined everywhere on the main page are awful.

Either it's bad AI coverart (bonus points for 'glamming it up' with a 'sexy lady' as your stream photo to lure desperate men in), or it loads into a stream with some random middle-aged chud trying to hawk bad baseball cards for "$2 starts!" as you're trying to scroll through the listings.

drcongo

a day ago

Why not just block TechCrunch? Everything about it is appalling.

VCFundedGenYer

a day ago

This is unnecessary. Use the built in browser autoplay block.

And if that doesn't work, use reader view (as you always should)

baal80spam

a day ago

Is there a script or filter to block autoplay on YT? I think I've tried everything, and there is nothing that does it reliably. It's quite infuriating.

ltbarcly3

2 days ago

I know I didn't wake up in 2011 because uBlock Origin exists. Yet someone is talking about TechCrunch, so the most likely conclusion is that uBlock Origin existed long before I thought it did, like 2011.

dabber21

2 days ago

I feel dirty browsing the web without that extension

NietTim

2 days ago

With the amount of times ad networks like googles have spread malware etc it's a basic internet security practice these days.

rstat1

2 days ago

Also a great practice if you do any amount of browsing on mobile as it’s practically impossible to read any mobile website through all the stupid ads. Just today I was trying to read an article on my phone in a browser without ubo and was basically blocked from doing so by a full screen video ad that kept popping up on its own even after dismissing it

forgotpwd16

2 days ago

Lol. But uBO is indeed quite old, having started in 2015 (and 2014 plain uB). Probably haven't visited TechCrunch since before its time.