Blocking everything

In June 2019, one tester ran this suite in the tester's browser. The tester reported that all videos were prevented from playing automatically because the tester had taken these steps:

  1. Disable JavaScript
  2. Disable video autoplay, even if the video is muted
  3. Disable GIF looping
  4. Install the Firefox extension "Disable Transitions and Animations" by Simon, or create a file in Firefox's chrome directory called userContent.css and add commands to that file to disable CSS animation

These steps hide all autoplaying animation at the expense of disabling features of the web application platform on which many users rely.

However, a minority of users see the World Wide Web as a means to view static documents, not a platform for rich interactive applications. These traditionalist tech-savvy users, many of whom hang out on sites such as SoylentNews and Slashdot, are satisfied with the limited interactivity offered by link navigation and form submission. To them, the intrusive, unforgiving surveillance of interest-based advertising networks has poisoned the well so much that they have begun to shun all JavaScript and WebAssembly in the browser and learn to love the full-page reload. Thus anything requiring richer interaction ought to be a native application that the user has a chance to download in source code form, inspect, build, install, and use locally. They concede that delivering a native application for multiple operating systems is far more difficult than a web application, but they value their privacy more than the ability to use a particular application on their preferred operating system.