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Why I went back to Firefox


Unwanted video was the last straw. Few things are more irksome than going to a web site and having a grating and useless video start playing. It’s increasingly common. Unwanted video slows everything down. And if you’re on a cellular or satellite connection, unwanted video eats up your data faster than anything.

As far as I could determine, with Google Chrome there was no way to block aggressive video. There are a couple of Chrome plug-ins that are supposed to suppress unwanted video, but they didn’t work. I’m hardly the only person who despises unwanted video. In techie forums where this is discussed, the consensus seems to be that Google sided with the devil — advertisers and rude web sites — and gave the money people what they want at the expense of what we little people want. It’s Google after all. So it’s not surprising.

Part of the problem with unwanted video is not only stopping it from automatically playing, but also stopping it from being automatically “preloaded” and wasting data. A Firefox extension named “Disable HTML5 Autoplay,” though it is in an early version, seems to work. Using that extension with Firefox was the only way I’ve been able to block the extremely aggressive video that Huffington Post pushes at you.

You might ask why anyone would even go to Huffington Post anymore, now that it’s in a tailspin of click bait headlines and cheap content. The reason is that, though Huffington Post rarely anymore has anything fit to read, I do want to see how they’re playing the news. Huffington Post emphasizes leftwing anger items the same way Drudge Report emphasizes rightwing anger items. They’re useful as gauges of the propaganda du jour and what is being fed to the masses.

Firefox clearly is working hard to position itself as the anti-corporate, pro-privacy web browser. Chrome’s dominance will be hard to break, but I suspect that we will increasingly see some migration toward Firefox.

5 Comments

  1. Henry wrote:

    Thanks for the tip re Firefox…I was getting tons of auto play video’s not matter what I visited

    Monday, June 5, 2017 at 12:38 pm | Permalink
  2. DCS wrote:

    Always been loyal to Firefox, partly because of one great feature that Chrome will probably never offer: Reader Mode. It turns EVERYTHING off, not just videos but also annoying blinking adds.

    It doesn’t show up when you first land on a site like the (now worthless) Huffington Post. But after you have gone to an individual story, look for the book icon to the right of the URL. When you click on that, it reproduces the page in a clean, white format with comfortably large font size set at a width that’s comfortable to read.

    Try it. You’ll like it.

    DCS

    Monday, June 5, 2017 at 12:52 pm | Permalink
  3. Henry wrote:

    Question: Where do I disable HTML5 Autoplay? I checked Preferences and do not see that option.

    Monday, June 5, 2017 at 2:41 pm | Permalink
  4. daltoni wrote:

    Hi Henry: It’s a plug-in, or “add-on.” In Firefox, go to Tools -> Add-ons -> Get Add-ons and search for an add-on named “Disable HTML5 Autoplay.” Then download and enable the add-on.

    Monday, June 5, 2017 at 2:45 pm | Permalink
  5. Henry wrote:

    Gracias…done

    Tuesday, June 6, 2017 at 1:18 pm | Permalink

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