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Comment by nix0n | Hacker News Reader

Now that HTML5 is gradually replacing Flash, has anyone seen a good Flashblock replacement for blocking HTML5?

The most effective way I've found to disable autoplay is to simply block the video content networks which provide these. At my last update, it was a rather small set. This is particularly effective against large media sites (and yes, it means you'll need to unblock to see the video content, if you wish to).

    0.0.0.0                 player.theplatform.com  # Autoplay video
    0.0.0.0                 link.theplatform.com    # Autoplay video
    0.0.0.0                 ci-2862d2c8d6-68f418d2.http.atlas.cdn.yimg.com # Autoplay video
    0.0.0.0                 big.assets.huffingtonpost.com # Autoplay video
    0.0.0.0                 ht1.cdn.turner.com      # Autoplay video
    0.0.0.0                 ht2.cdn.turner.com      # Autoplay video
    0.0.0.0                 ht3.cdn.turner.com      # Autoplay video
    0.0.0.0                 ht4.cdn.turner.com      # Autoplay video
    0.0.0.0                 ht5.cdn.turner.com      # Autoplay video
    0.0.0.0                 ht6.cdn.turner.com      # Autoplay video
    0.0.0.0                 ht7.cdn.turner.com      # Autoplay video
    0.0.0.0                 ht8.cdn.turner.com      # Autoplay video
    0.0.0.0                 ht9.cdn.turner.com      # Autoplay video

Alternatively, uMatrix should allow you to globally blacklist, then optionally whitelist same.

Block all Canvas, Audio and Video elements?

Yes, I'm looking for a browser plugin to do that (with whitelisting to turn some back on, preferably).

uBlock or any other ad blocking add-on should be able to.

Add "##video", "##audio", and "##canvas" to your blacklist rules to remove them from the DOM.

Then you can whitelist on a per-site basis to turn them back on if desired.

Can I ask for an example entry / site that you actually do this?

Don't forget shit like WebRTC that's impossible to turn off and known to leak certain private information (such as internal IPs).

Here is a Firefox add-on to disable WebRTC:

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/happy-bonobo-disabl...

The source code is on GitHub:

https://github.com/ChrisAntaki/disable-webrtc-firefox

All it does is set media.peerconnection.enabled to false. Looks like it's not enough, since WebTorrent[1] is working somehow anyway.

[1] https://webtorrent.io/

Do you get more than one peer? I seem to get only one when I disable media.peerconnection.enabled and I assume that one peer is just the server streaming the video directly.

Yes, it falls back to web seed. I've got explanation from devs.

I've actually seen some video play anyway despite having parent elements / own elements blocked.

I block the source video content networks or whatever they're called, in /etc/hosts or equivalent. Those should be addable as custom blocklists in uBlock Origin as well. See following post higher up this thread.

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