PSA: Don’t leave YouTube open in any tabs.
PCGamer: "It's not just you: YouTube is slowing down your PC if you have AdBlock installed by making your CPU sweat—though despite the company's past behaviour, it's probably AdBlock's fault. YouTube Premium members also appear to be impacted." (Harvey Randall) (Jan 16, 2024)
"AdBlock users have been reporting widespread performance issues with the extension enabled on YouTube, and while suspicion justifiably fell on YouTube's head, the problem may not lie in the platform itself.
In a thread posted to the YouTube subreddit over the weekend (thanks, 9to5Google) users noted that having AdBlock enabled caused slow load times and increased CPU usage, as one user writes: "This messes up the resources on the computer as a whole. It just kills chrome it seems."
I decided to test this myself, and I noticed that having YouTube open with AdBlock increased my rig's CPU usage by around 17%. While using AdBlock or similar programs is against the website's terms of service, AdBlock is also a massively popular extension. On the Chrome web store it boasts 60 million users.
From what I could see the increase was pretty consistent—so not a dangerous spike—but lower-end laptops mainly used for browsing could start having heat problems. At best it's inconvenient and annoying.
This has led to troubleshooting paranoia, as sudden and unexplained performance dips can be a sign of hardware problems. User JotaroKujoxXx says they were "wondering why my laptop ran like a fucking jet for the last few days", while another commenter replies: "Yeah I've been deleting shit randomly thinking it was my storage space problem."
The slow-down also appears to be impacting users who are subscribed to YouTube Premium while using AdBlocker for other websites, which is a problem—seeing as a subscription is a way to avoid ads without violating ToS, causing some users to feel hard done by. Our Guides Writer Sarah James tested the extension with Premium, and noted an increase of about 15-18%.
While YouTube has come under severe suspicion—including from myself—said suspicion was not entirely unwarranted. In November of last year, TheVerge reported a five-second loading delay on other browsers running ad blockers, and the company's statements created a solid M.O for this kind of thing.
The report stated that YouTube's communications manager Christopher Lawton "said that users will keep seeing issues like this as YouTube’s ad-blocker detection methods improve". These measures have made the company first-in-line to blame for any problems with these extensions—even when, as it turns out, it's (relatively) innocent.
I've received a comment from Christopher Lawton (YouTube's communication manager) who says in no uncertain terms: "loading delays experienced by Adblock and AdBlock Plus users are not caused by our ad blocker detection efforts."
(keep reading)
PCGamer: https://lnkd.in/e6YA3_Kp
#youtube #google #adblock