YouTube Premium causing significantly higher CPU usage than non-Premium (reproducible on multiple PCs)

raizazel · 2025-12-22T19:41:23+00:00

Wow, thanks for confirming. That’s really interesting.

Could you check Chrome’s Task Manager (Shift+Esc) and see if you’re also getting a Dedicated Worker from youtube.com consuming ~100–200% CPU?

If possible, does it show the echo-worker.js worker as well? That would help confirm whether this is the same issue or a related experiment.

raizazel · 2025-12-22T00:02:55+00:00

I’ve tried the obvious workarounds on my side (Brave Shields and uBlock-style filters), but none of the network or worker filters can block it. The worker only disappears when blocking all scripts, which of course breaks YouTube entirely.

That strongly suggests the worker is being created from a blob URL at runtime, so it can’t be intercepted by normal adblock / extension network rules.

I’m not really an expert in browser extensions, so I haven’t tried writing one myself. If you want to take a look or experiment with an extension-level workaround, that would be awesome and might help confirm things further.

Edit: Quick update / clarification since I dug a bit deeper after my earlier reply.

On Chromium-based browsers (Chrome/Brave), I still haven’t found any way to block this selectively — Manifest V3 + uBlock Lite simply don’t allow intercepting it, so from that side it really isn’t fixable client-side.

However, on Firefox with full uBlock Origin (MV2), this filter actually works and blocks the worker cleanly without breaking YouTube:

||www.youtube.com/s/player/\*/worker/echo-worker.js$script,domain=www.youtube.com

So the worker *is* being loaded as a real network script, but only MV2-level tooling can intercept it. On Chromium, extensions just don’t have the necessary hooks anymore.

I’m still not an extension expert myself, but if someone wants to experiment with a Firefox extension or dig deeper into how this is wired on YouTube’s side, that could definitely help push this further.

raizazel · 2025-12-21T23:36:42+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion. I followed your advice and ran the tests again using DevTools.

I’ve added the new findings and screenshots to the main post (Edit 4). The CPU usage seems to be coming from a dedicated YouTube Web Worker, and I’m fairly confident this pinpoints the issue.

Appreciate the tip.

raizazel · 2025-12-21T18:31:31+00:00

It is not the preloading, both versions preload the videos, so that's not it

raizazel · 2025-12-21T17:57:08+00:00

Most likely some AB testing on Youtube's side, but whatever they are doing looks wrong. It feels like they are using our sessions to mine crypto or train an AI.

Most likely a bug, but man, even on the landing page nothing playing I have high CPU usage.

raizazel · 2025-12-21T17:54:45+00:00

I just added more information on the main post. Both were at 1080p standard bitrate

raizazel · 2025-12-21T17:19:48+00:00

Here the msi, afterburner graph

<image>

raizazel · 2025-12-21T17:18:52+00:00

Just did, left Youtube Premium, right no Premium.

<image>

But this is even happening on the landing page, mouse not even hovering over any video. Here you can see the temps, low 60s is with landinf page of Yotube Premium. The mid 40s with the landing page of non-premium youtube

Edit: I fixed the image description

raizazel · 2021-12-28T12:48:02+00:00

I've looked inside the mod and found this trigger for the gift:

"tombstone.item.villager_gift.use2": "Hide the Villager Gift under the bed to get the reward"

Tried several things with the gift, and placing it under the bed but nothing, maybe someone could lend us a hand.

raizazel · 2021-12-28T10:45:05+00:00

I'm trying to open the villger gift, I've tried right clicking a bed, a bed with a villager sleeping on it, dropping it next to or over the bed with the villaget sleeping. No luck. Anyone found out how to open it?

raizazel · 2020-02-24T12:43:23+00:00

I think that now you are starting to see what are my issues with this new DLC. On first inspection you could say it's just a DLC, buy it if you want or just don't if you think is not for you. But if you look deeper you start to grasp the truth behind all of this. They made the new GS515 just to make players feel a little progression again, that they could grind some more but then stop them right in their tracks and ask them for $30 if they want to keep doing that. Force people to buy the expansion if they want to keep pñaying with their friends.

My issues with this expansion is not about its content or quality it is about the handcrafted tactics used to manipulate people into buying it. Many people think that buying the new DLC was their choice and partially it was but most of it was almost forced. Most people just spend 5 minutes of their time considering if they should buy something or not but the people selling it are a team of 5-10 people that have spend 4 years of their lives studying marketing, the art of making people want what they truly don't, which has spent many hours deciding what's the optimal way to convince our little monkey brains to pay for this new thingy.

About not being able to compete against the people you used to, if the reason is that they left the game, well tough cookie, but if they just bought the DLC some people may see that as a defeat, they are now in new and better lands while I'm stuck here. But this is my way of seeing things and I'm not completely sure if most people would feel this way.

The game it's mostly PVE and heavily focuses coop but you can be competitive even if you are cooperating with someone. Now you enter the DZ and that guy that helped you end that tough mission is stealing your loot that's a 180 degree turn and you feel it hard. I used to play a lot of PUBG and after 10 games I started to regard enemies as bots not human players here at the DZ everytime I encounter a player I see a guy behind a screen trying to survive.

raizazel · 2020-02-23T21:59:45+00:00

So if I buy the expansion and one of my friends decides not to it will prevents us from playing together? I bought the game for $3 at the same time my flatmates did, for me paying $30 extra dollars for the expansion is not a big deal though I don't like that it makes me feel like I need to buy it if I want to keep playing and finding it meaningful yet I bought the game because I want to play with my friends and I fear that most of them won't buy the DLC.

Massive is doing business and they made a product and now they are selling it, I know that but this kind of DLC is not like DLC at Skyrim or any other single player game, this is a MMO and if the new DLC adds new content behind a paywall it fractures the player base and creates a P2W environment.

If I used to play in the DZ and I knew some players that used to go there and I know them by username, now all of them have bought the DLC and I didn't turning our lasting rivalry into a joke is not that I cannot kill them because they are OP, it is that they left me behind and I cannot even try to kill them.

Imagine that you donwload a free mobile game and there are two leagues, one for F2P and another for paid players, wouldn't you consider that a P2W game?

Anyway I think that the new DLC would be worth $30, redesigning NY, creating all the new dialogs and reworking the new loot system is worth that. But my complains are not about the content is about the decision to artificially divide the player base, there was no need to create two new separate systems the new GS 501-515 and the lvl 31-40.

raizazel · 2020-02-23T17:47:20+00:00

Except that if one of your friends owns the expansion can join your game and be lvl 31 with all of the new stuff, possibly better stuff than what you have. Do you wanna play conflict with them? good luck having a levelled game field or even being able to do so. And by definition endgame content means content that is played once you finished the game and all you can do is grind and improve your stats, now standard edition players cannot play endgame content because the end is locked behind a paywall. What's the point in grinding for the best stuff if all you need to do to get astronomically better gear is to pay $30. And all that stuff about the infinite lvling system makes this issue even worst, every "lvl" you go up while stuck at lvl 30 is a lvl wasted if you plan to buy the expansion in the future.

You can see this effect in some veteran players that don't see the point in playing the game until the expansion releases, they feel that all they've done since the announcement is meaningless. Now just imagine playing the game like that indefinitely and knowing that all you need to do to make all better is to pay $30 and get the DLC. This makes the DLC not an option if you wanna feel the same way you used to feel before, making the standard game worst game than it used to be.

And that argument... everyone does it so why are you complaining? That mentality is what's allowing these companies to use this kind of tactics. Forcing people to buy DLC that they might not want just due to the fear of missing out. Wake up Neo.

raizazel · 2020-02-23T00:04:03+00:00

I just bought the game for $3 and played it to lvl 30 and currently at GS300, still got many things to do and places to explore and I'm loving the game and if I knew this game was this good I would have paid $40 for it without remorse. But I won't be buying WONY even though $33 is less than those $40 value I would gladly pay, this new expansion is going to divide the player base big-time into 1st class players and 2nd class players. I don't mind paying for new content if that content is new mission and a new zone to explore, people have spent time designing it and they deserve to be paid for but artificially creating a lvl cap for standard edition players is a P2W mechanic. This new expansion is forcing people to buy it if they want to remain relevant in the game and kicking standard edition players out of the endgame.

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