If you’ve been using AdBlock on Chrome while watching YouTube recently, you might have noticed that your CPU usage has gone through the roof. The good news is that it’s not just you. The bad news is that, in a way, that makes it worse.
A thread on Reddit (which we found through an article on PCGamer, thanks friends) was full of people complaining about buffering and CPU load issues when watching YouTube with the AdBlock extension enabled on Chrome, even if they had YouTube Premium. This is obviously bad. People were saying that they thought there was something wrong with their computer or that there was damage being done.
In a statement made to PCGamer, YouTube’s communication manager Christopher Lawton said: “Loading delays experienced by AdBlock and AdBlock Plus users are not caused by our ad blocker detection efforts.”
If your eyebrows raised a little (or more), then you’re not alone, but it looks like it might be true (at least partially). R Hill (from uBlock Origin) has pointed out some issues with the latest update according to the Gitlab issues tracker.
Other people have pointed out that people should be using Firefox instead of Chrome anyway, as Firefox is the superior browser with a better focus on privacy and security, more extensions, and is generally faster.
Chrome will generally hog more resources than Firefox, even when a plugin isn’t giving people visions of (utterly plausible) conspiracy theories.
Of course, Google does still slow down YouTube on Firefox if you have ad blockers installed (though, there are ways to counter that a little). But still, there are good add-ons/extensions that you might enjoy while AdBlock and AdBlock Plus get fixed.
Or, you know, you can stop using ad blockers on YouTube like Google wants you to, which is also a valid option.
UPDATE: Good news! We have now heard from AdBlock and it looks like the problem has been solved. In a statement, Gertrud Kolb, Chief Technology Officer at eyeo (the company that makes AdBlock) said “AdBlock and Adblock Plus users have recently experienced a slow down in performance and a higher use of CPU when browsing on YouTube and other websites. Our engineering team fixed the problem and released ABP 3.22.1 and AB 5.17.1. The new versions are already available in the Opera and Edge extension stores and are currently in review in the Mozilla and Chrome extension stores. This means the problem is solved and AdBlock and Adblock Plus users should not experience issues that are related to the fixed bug, as soon as their extension is updated to the new version. Our team will closely monitor the situation and is ready to make further adjustments should it become necessary.”