Hello Google Chrome: What the Hell Happened to Autoplay Ad Blocks?

Reader Brian just sent this Email:

Mish,

I know this drives you nuts, too. What happened to Google Chrome blocking videos, ads etc.? They made all of this noise about Chrome now blocking obtrusive videos and advertisements. That seemed to be in effect for maybe 60 days. Now Chrome will play anything. Any obnoxious, dumb ass video that you CANNOT STOP, whether on desktop or the browser. I have searched around on what happened with the change to no avail, for at least a month. Did they reverse the change? What happened?

Thanks,

Brian

Worse Than Ever

Things are worse than ever before. A number of websites not only have auto-play ads, but you cannot even stop the damn videos until the ad plays.

I was thinking about this yesterday before Brian wrote. And this morning when I got up, my computer was plying two audios at once.

One trick that I have seen a lot of lately (and the one that struck this morning) is the "delayed attack". After some period of time an autoplay video ad kicks in. I often have 50 links open at a time than have to go hunting around for the one causing the problem.

Why so many links open?

Many times I refer to several articles in one post. I accumulate as many a eight articles on a topic and narrow down when I start a post.

Flashback December 19, 2017