> Years ago I was on the "people who block JavaScript are crazy" bandwagon, until just loading a single news article online meant waiting for a dozen ads and autoplaying videos to load.

Seems like clear case of "crossing the river to collect water" (as the Swedish saying says)? This is what I use uBlock Origin (with the right blocklists) for and it happens automagically. I did use uMatrix for quite a awhile, but eventually ended up ditching it because uBlock Origin worked so well.