How to stop videos from auto-playing

Auto-playing videos are perhaps one of the most annoying features of the modern internet. News sites are the absolute worst. I'm there because I want to read the article, and yet the damn video starts up because they want to play you the TV bit as well. Anyone who designs websites to auto-play videos is a scumbag as far as I'm concerned. Too strong? Nahhhhh......
 
Anyway I finally vowed to do something about it and I can't believe it was as simple as a browser setting....guess I was just too lazy to look into before. Ha! Here's the info:
 
http://www.consumeraffair...utoplaying-082514.html

Yeah....I hate those as well.
Thanks Sharke!!

Rain
 
AdBlock - I can't be thankful enough for that software! Not only does it block those ads, but it also allowed me to hide "Trending" on Facebook, which was a major source of daily despair for me...

Yeah, it's a great tool for sure. I always use it to block those annoying Tweeter, FB, G+, etc buttons infecting the web. Also I've blocked all sorts of things that were just simply causing me visual distress like yesterday when that nice fellow was having problems with his avatar and it was hogging half my vertical screenspace. I blocked it with ABP until he sorted it out and then unblocked it. Brilliant!
 
As far as facebook I rarely log in anymore because it's gotten so intrusive, slow and clunky over the years but it seems the only way to get a hold of many of my friends.
 
But I discovered the trick to having a far less annoying FB experience. I just use the mobile version of it and all that crazy annoying stuff goes away. It's a weeee bit harder to navigate and look at large comment threads but it loads WAY faster and isn't a pile of javascript barf all over the place. Also the only "ads" I see are mostly text based "Sponsored" stuff in the timeline which is easily ignored just by scrolling past them.

Noscript is awesome,  not just as a way to stop annoying vids, but as a supplemental  security measure. It's  a little annoying at first when going to sites you actually want to see, but it removes the element of surprise for those dtive by scripts that try to install things the second you land on a page.

henkejs
Yeah, I've been using AdBlock for a while now. Big help, but it still didn't stop all those auto-play videos.

Seriously, NoScript does. ABP mostly just blocks domains that feed ads based on a blacklist (I think). It doesn't really deal with scripts to the extent NoScript does. If you use Firefox it's easily searched in the add on section. I think it's available for Chrome now too and maybe Opera (but Opera I believe has it's own advanced features to do stuff like that... Opera is the nerd's browser and is highly underated).

Another nice thing about noscript is you can allow a video to play on a page temporarily while still blocking the ridiculous number of ad and tracking scripts on the same page.

Tried it. They're still playing. Sigh.

But you were referring to sharke's post, weren't you? D'oh!
 

sharke
I will check out noscript, thanks!
 

Lemme know if you run into any problems. It's a little weird to get used to at first especially trying to figure out which domains to allow for what but the benefits far outweigh the initial annoyance IMO. It's all about experimenting with your whitelist to make sure all the things you actually need to work on the sites you use regularly are allowed and/or you know what to allow when.
 
The biggest thing you will notice is likely Google. Their various services rely on things like gstatic and the like being allowed or on Amazon you have to allow their image host. Crap like that.
 
Cheers. You're gonna love a script free net.