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Comment by Tiktaalik | Hacker News Reader

Random question: How do I stop videos from auto starting on Bloomberg? I'm running Safari with no Flash, and have Ad-block on. Video doesn't start, but audio does.

Super Annoying.

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I've taken to identifying the VPO (video platform organization) and their hosts, and adding them to my /etc/hosts blocklist.

https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/QZ1vdpwB...

These will catch most of them:

    0.0.0.0                 www.autofixinfo.com     # Autoplay video
    0.0.0.0                 c.brightcove.com        # Autoplay video
    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

If you must watch the vids, downloading via yt-download (from another host or vm not using that hosts file) frequently works.

Why not use NoScript and/or RequestPolicy instead? That way, all such sites are blocked by default, and you can temporarily or permanently enable individual ones with a couple of clicks.

I do, but they don't work on all sites in all situations.

I find communicating to VPO's that I'll block them for this shit, and advertising this fact and methods, might have some positive effect.

There are a small number of video providers for all the usual 80/20 rules. A half dozen or so nails virtually everything frequently used.

And very little video is even worth viewing.

Related, it would be great for HN to be able to tag stories as having auto-playing audio, a paywall, modal ads, and other undesirable elements of a posted story's site.

It would be great if paywall stories weren't allowed.

Even better!

But, but, but... ads and adblockers and how eveil ads are and let's block them! Let's pay for content and all that jazz.

Let's motivate for a content syndication alternative.

https://cabalamat.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/a-broadband-tax-f...

Advertising is a net negative on far too many fronts.

People don't want ads. People don't want to pay for content. I think people shouldn't feel entitiled to content

Information goods don't play well with markets for multiple reasons.

"Paul Romer on Information Goods" https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/311aco/paul_ro...

"Why Information Goods and Markets are a Poor Match" https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2vm2da/why_inf...

Those are great! Thanks.

I think most people here know how to get around a paywall. It is pretty easy

It's another web trend I don't understand. All news websites seem to do it, it's super obnoxious, and I don't know anybody who doesn't just rush to click stop as soon as they click the page.

Pre-roll ads (there was one there, though it was for Bloomberg itself).

What works for me in Chrome is to disable plugins by default. It seems to work universally, including for Bloomberg.

I don't even bother running an ad-block, because disabling plugins is so effective at suppressing annoyances.

Chrome has made this worse recently, though. I disabled Flash more than a year ago on an older computer, and all that's required is clicking to enable.

When I recently installed Chrome on a newer computer, the new method is Ctrl+Click to get a context menu, and then selecting "Run this plugin". Not sure why they made it more complicated, and I wish I knew how to get the older behavior my older computer has somehow retained while Chrome has been auto-updating.

I really appreciate what Chrome did. People got clever and would move their player (or triggers) in front of your regular clicks to get their annoyance to play. They can't do that with right-click and a left-click in a context menu.

At least, that is my assumption, and if not, they should consider that as a positive outcome for me.

Go to a page with an unloaded flash element. On the far right side of the address bar there will be a puzzle piece with a red 'X' over it, click that and you can enable plugins on that page for that session only.

It's actually a slight improvement, because previously you'd have to reload a page to do that.

Disable Javascript or install uMatrix to block frames/XHR entirely.

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