Please mark this as having auto-play video - I just disrupted a quiet room at work and I never watch the videos anyway.
Moreover, I always mute the speakers of my computer, for exactly that reason. When I do want sound, I usually connect my headset or an external speaker. The computer's speakers remain muted. In the rare cases where I do want to use the computer's speakers, I unmute them, and mute them when I'm finished. This is so seldom that it's not a big deal.
Back to browsers, I wonder why those implemented auto-play for videos in the first place. More specifically: I wonder why they auto-play audio, as I don't see that issue with animated GIFs. Moving ads are annoying, but not remotely as bad as an unexpected sound.
The upcoming Firefox versions are very promising in that regard:
"Block video auto-play: Firefox will provide users with a way to block video auto-play that doesn't break websites." https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Roadmap
"Implement new autoplay policy" https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1382574
Even the strongest setting "Document user activation is required" isn't good enough. It means one click in the page will cause the video to start playing, which is annoying and highly game-able. I don't want a click somewhere on the page to cause a video elsewhere on the page to start playing. Every content site is going to do something to require you to click, like not showing the whole article and having "Click to expand".
I've been using AutoplayStopper and it works wonderfully: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/autoplaystopper/ej...
Once you start using it it's shocking how many (attempted) autoplay videos there are that you never noticed.
That's why it is so refreshing to see at least one of them (Firefox) actually trying to get it right.
The technical term for a browser is "User Agent". That naming may be historic and old-fashioned, but it was named that way for a reason. It's time to restore the original meaning, to make the browser an agent who actually acts on behalf of and in the interests of the user, not the website creator.