Videos run from the MSN.com site lock up after playing about 1.5 minutes followed by an ad and will not restart.

Answer provided by AI did not resolve the issue.

Hi David,

From what I checked, This behavior is a known compatibility issue between MSN.com’s video player and Safari on macOS, and it is not something you can reliably fix through cache clearing or site permissions alone.

What is happening is that MSN’s player relies heavily on ad-insertion scripts and DRM components that do not always recover correctly in Safari after an ad break. When the ad finishes, the player fails to re-initialize the video stream, which leaves the controls unresponsive. This is why the video consistently freezes after about the same amount of playback time and cannot be restarted.

Because the issue is on the site/player side, your options on macOS are limited:

Safari’s privacy features (even when content blockers are disabled) still restrict certain third-party scripts and cross-site tracking mechanisms used by MSN ads. Clearing cache, cookies, and site data usually does not resolve this, and the problem can persist even on fully updated versions of Safari and macOS.

The most reliable workarounds are to use a different browser (such as Edge, Chrome, or Firefox) for MSN video playback, or to watch the same content through another source that hosts the video without MSN’s embedded player. If you want to continue using Safari, keeping “Prevent cross-site tracking” disabled and ensuring no system-level content blockers are active may help in some cases, but it is not consistently effective.

In short, this is not a fault with your iMac or Safari configuration; it is a player compatibility issue between MSN’s ad-driven video platform and Safari. Using another browser is currently the most dependable solution

I blame Microsoft mainly as they have moved heavy handed to monetize anyone using them as their start page. They are all about ads and they frequently trade in fake news stories that court viewers to click on them. They could be more informative and less greedy to be sure. Then theirs the Safari browser. It simply won't recover playing or control of the video that the viewer was lured by MSN to watch. It's about how the Apple software in Safari sees these MSN scripts...or doesn't see them as it's as if they just freeze thinking it might be a kind of attack basically halting all processing of them. Bottom line is two fairly greedy entities who have little interest in playing together. So, after trying all workarounds suggested by a myriad of sites the only way to get those videos to play in their entirety is to use practically any other browser of your choice over Safari. Or, just boycott MSN's start page which is in a way more effective as it shuts the increasingly greedy and shady nature of that platform down. Taking their revenues away sends a great message if enough folks do it.