There are loads of dark patterns, agreed. This drove me to go hunting in Firefox for a “don’t automatically download shit” option, but to no avail. I guess they hijack your click from the previous page. Just all round awful.
On the other hand, I’ve not had any audio or video problems once in the call, so ymmv.
You could change the option of where to save downloads. Instead of automatically putting them in the downloads folder, if you change it to ask every time, then you will get the file browser prompt before the download starts.
On the other hand, I’ve not had any audio or video problems once in the call, so ymmv.