It's a bit annoying for pages like Youtube where you do want autoplay to work, so you have to move the timeline cursor a bit, but the upside is worth it.
Also available in Chrome, I hear.
Most of these "news" outlets are becoming more and more aggressive with advertising.
It's either ads, subscriptions, or they'll run cryptocurrency mining on your hardware. Journalism ain't free, kiddos.
I'd rather a micropayment system with browser plugin that decrements your account on sites you agree to pay per page view. I don't mind paying $0.02 to read a decent article but I really don't want a bunch of CPU load DOS'ing my machine or malware screwing with it or my privacy.