Yeah, I’ve noticed CNN can be pretty rough on older setups too. I’m on an older Mac myself and Firefox ESR sometimes struggles with sites that have a lot going on in the background.
Even in safe mode, it doesn’t really help because most of the load comes from the site itself — videos auto-loading, ads, and scripts constantly refreshing. CNN is one of those sites that just keeps doing stuff even when you’re not interacting with it.
One thing that helped a bit for me was turning off autoplay for videos in Firefox settings. Also, if you open the task manager inside Firefox (about:performance), you can usually see CNN sitting at the top eating CPU. I tried opening the same page in another browser just to compare, and it was still a bit heavy, so I don’t think it’s only a Firefox issue.
Also, kind of related to how heavy modern media platforms have become—people are increasingly consuming content through modified apps like YouTube Premium APK (like the ones shared on ytmodz), mainly to avoid ads and background scripts. It highlights how much extra load things like ads and tracking add, which is probably part of why sites like CNN feel so resource-heavy even on decent hardware.
Feels like a mix of an older OS + a heavy website more than anything else.
