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So... can somebody explain what the difference between "essential" and "non-essential" Flash content is, and how Chrome can tell the difference?

According to the article, it's based on whether it's the "main" object on the page. Size and centeredness both play a role, I'd guess.

So, say, a browser plugin which renamed "main" elements to, oh, say, "notmain", would have the effect of killing autoplay.

Though for Flash that's already possible. It's HTML5 that's bugging the shit out of me now.

For Firefox, I think you can just set media.autoplay.enabled = false in about:config.

Thanks, I'd not seen an HTML5 video blocker previously.