It's pretty much mandatory to have (yet another) addon to disable autoplaying videos, sadly.

I think I hate this more than ads, honestly (not all autoplaying videos are ads).

Firefox lets you do this without need for an addon. Stop using an ad company's browser if you don't want to see ads; there is a huge conflict of interest.

Google also almost entirely finances firefox development.

Does this mean Firefox is controlled opposition? }:)

Thankfully all news websites serve their videos from a separate domain, so you only have to block that in your ad blocker. Or, just disable JavaScript and hope that won't break images because loading images with JavaScript is apparently also the hot new thing to do.

Popups and ads can still be blocked very effectively. Since I downloaded a comprehensive hosts file blacklist and filled all checkboxes in uBlock Origin's settings it's extremely rare something slips through, and if it does I can just interactively add a rule for it with a few clicks.