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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.
I feel dirty browsing the web without that extension
Lol. But uBO is indeed quite old, having started in 2015 (and 2014 plain uB). Probably haven't visited TechCrunch since before its time.
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).
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.
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.
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
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.
I'd just disable js entirely for that site. And if it breaks it entirely, oh well
Then I cant browse the comments - which are in reverse the reason Im visiting the site :-)
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
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.

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

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.
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
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.

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.

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.

>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.

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-...

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.
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.

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

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

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