Stuart Breckenridge did what every developer has done at some point — opened a mainstream tech article and watched the browser choke. The offending page: a PC Gamer article recommending RSS readers that weighs in at 37MB.
Let that number breathe for a second. 37 megabytes. For text and a few screenshots. The entire text of "War and Peace" is about 3.2MB. You could download the Linux kernel's README roughly 12,000 times in the same payload. A page that exists to recommend a technology designed to strip away web cruft is itself buried under enough JavaScript, ad trackers, consent popups, and autoplay video to make a 2015 smartphone weep.
This is not a PC Gamer-specific problem. It's the logical endpoint of the ad-supported publishing model that now dominates the web. Pages routinely ship 10-20MB of third-party scripts before the first paragraph renders. The median page weight on the web has crossed 2.5MB according to HTTP Archive data, up from 500KB a decade ago. Gaming and tech publications sit well above that median — their pages are among the heaviest on the open web, routinely loading 50+ third-party requests per page.
The irony here writes itself, but the underlying point is worth stating plainly: RSS never stopped being the right answer for content consumption. An RSS feed for the same article is measured in kilobytes. It contains the actual content — the words, the recommendations — without the surveillance apparatus and ad-tech stack bolted on top. It loads instantly. It works offline. It doesn't ask you to accept 847 tracking cookies.
For developers, this is also a performance engineering reminder. Every time you add a third-party script, you're making a tradeoff. Most publishing teams have lost track of those tradeoffs entirely. A 37MB page isn't a bug — it's what happens when nobody owns the performance budget, when every team adds "just one more" tracking pixel, and when the business model requires maximizing ad impressions per page view.
The HN discussion (438 points and climbing) predictably turned into an RSS appreciation thread, with developers sharing their preferred readers and feed management setups. The consensus: RSS is the web's most underrated protocol, and pages like this are the reason.
If you're not using an RSS reader in 2026, a 37-megabyte article about RSS readers is the universe trying to tell you something.
The title buried the lede.> In the five minutes since I started writing this post the website has downloaded almost half a gigabyte of new ads.I’m guessing this is due to autoplaying videos. *500 MB* in 5 minutes.37 MB is petite compared to that.
To use a good point of reference that I've seen others also start using lately, an installation of Windows 95 is roughly 40MB, so in loading that page you've downloaded approximately one Windows 95 installation. Then another 10+ times with the 500MB more that came after.
In Firefox + Unlock Origin: Downloads 5.6MB and then stops loading.Scrolling to the bottom of the page added 3MB of images and then stopped loading.
I have no metrics but there is a lot (if not most of) sites with similar issues.A simple site of lyrics, or newspapers that start videos automatically. Github was worse, now at least opens a bit more faster, but still very poorer than, example, codeberg. Sites are sites, most want to do fancy things
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It's not just "PC Gamer" but people making decisions behind as always. Three first people from their "Meet the Team" page [0]: Tim Clark — Brand Director (@timothydclark), Evan Lahti - Strategic Director (@elahti), Phil Savage — Global Editor-in-Chief (@Octaeder). Hopefully