uBlock Origin filter to block autoplay videos in TechCrunch (cornfieldlabs.github.io)

86 pointsby cornfieldlabs3 hours ago25 comments

ghtjason 3 hours 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).

Tarsul 2 hours 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.

close04 an hour 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.

KellyCriterion an hour 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 an hour 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.

thetallgeek 3 hours 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 an hour 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 an hour 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 hours 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.

lakeviewterrace 3 hours 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 hours 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.

arijun 2 hours ago

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

0points 2 hours ago

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

arijun 2 hours 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 13 minutes 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.

bborrez 2 hours 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.

kotaKat 41 minutes 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.

HelloUsername 3 hours 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

NietTim 3 hours ago

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

ltbarcly3 3 hours 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 3 hours ago

I feel dirty browsing the web without that extension

NietTim 3 hours ago

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

rstat1 an hour 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 20 minutes 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.