Yet another Hacker News

uBlock Origin filter to block autoplay videos in TechCrunch

67 points cornfieldlabs 2 hours ago 21 comments

ltbarcly3 1 hour ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

I feel dirty browsing the web without that extension

NietTim 1 hour ago | parent

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

ghtjason 1 hour ago | parent

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).

Tarsul 32 minutes ago | parent

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.

close04 22 minutes ago | parent

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.

KellyCriterion 20 minutes ago | parent

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 5 minutes ago | parent

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.

lakeviewterrace 1 hour ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

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.

arijun 47 minutes ago | parent

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

0points 40 minutes ago | parent

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

arijun 26 minutes ago | parent

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.

NietTim 1 hour ago | parent

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

HelloUsername 1 hour ago | parent

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

thetallgeek 1 hour ago | parent

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 19 minutes ago | parent

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 8 minutes ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

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.

bborrez 47 minutes ago | parent

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.