[HN Gopher] How web bloat impacts users with slow devices
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       How web bloat impacts users with slow devices
        
       Author : jasondavies
       Score  : 205 points
       Date   : 2024-03-16 20:08 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (danluu.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (danluu.com)
        
       | andy99 wrote:
       | Nobody cares about people with older devices. We've shifted to a
       | mode where companies tell their customers what they have to do,
       | and if they don't fit the mold they are dropped. It's more
       | profitable that way - you scale only revenue and don't have to
       | worry about accessibility or customer service or any edge cases.
       | That's what big tech has gotten for us.
        
         | dexwiz wrote:
         | You're getting downvoted but I think despite the tone you are
         | correct. 10 years ago corporate guidance on web dev was
         | backwards compatibility going back several versions. Now it's
         | hardly any concern for anything more than 6 months old.
         | 
         | More than anything I think it's because corporate IT has had to
         | modernize due to security. Security now wants you to update
         | constantly instead of running old vetted software. You also
         | cannot demand user use an old version of a browser that still
         | supports some old plugin. And as a vendor it's not profitable
         | to support people who maintain that mindset.
         | 
         | Also "update to the latest version" is the new "turn it off and
         | back on again," when it comes to basic IT help.
        
           | gjsman-1000 wrote:
           | Part of it was that users were terrible at updating browsers.
           | You needed to support Internet Explorer 6, or cut off a third
           | of your customers. It sucked.
           | 
           | Now every browser gets updates, automatically and
           | aggressively. The only real outlier is Safari, but even that
           | updates way quicker than older browsers used to.
           | 
           | As a result, who needs backward compatibility?
        
           | Gigachad wrote:
           | Because the people with money who are buying your products
           | are all running the latest version of iOS. The ones on a 6
           | year old Android version are not spending anything therefor
           | it isn't worth investing money in making sure it works for
           | them.
        
           | perardi wrote:
           | Who is this mythical end-user with an old browser? Because
           | they don't show up in browser usage statistics.
           | 
           | https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-version-market-share
           | 
           | Chrome is evergreen, even on Android. Safari, after a bit of
           | a fallow period, is updated fairly aggressively, and though
           | it's still coupled with OS updates, it's no longer married to
           | the annual x.0 releases.
           | 
           | Mind you, I still believe, and practice, you should write
           | semantic HTML with progressive enhancement. But at the same
           | time, I absolutely do not think you should go out of your way
           | to test for some ancient version of Safari running on a
           | first-generation iPad Pro--use basic webdev best practices,
           | and don't spend time worrying that container queries aren't
           | going to work for that sliver of the market.
        
             | dexwiz wrote:
             | Exactly. The landscape has changed because those old
             | browser users have been forced to update.
        
         | marcosdumay wrote:
         | Clues that a market is not competitive...
         | 
         | What most impresses me is that this happen on many markets that
         | _should_ be competitive by any sane rationale. Like group
         | buying or hotel booking. Yet, they also do that kind of shit,
         | and people still have nowhere to go.
         | 
         | The world economy became integrated and incredibly rigid.
        
       | Karrot_Kream wrote:
       | I'm normally a fan of Dan Luu's posts but I felt this one missed
       | the mark. The LCP/CPU table is a good one, but from there the
       | article turns into a bit on armchair psychology. From some random
       | comments coming from Discourse's founder, readers are asked to
       | build up an idea of what attitudes software engineers supposedly
       | have. Even Knuth gets dragged into the mud based on comments he
       | made about single vs multi-core performance and comments about
       | the Itanium (which is a long standing point of academic
       | contention.)
       | 
       | This article just felt too soft, too couched in internet fights,
       | to really stand up.
        
         | troupo wrote:
         | > readers are asked to build up an idea of what attitudes
         | software engineers supposedly have.
         | 
         | But they do, don't they. Discourse's founder's words are just
         | very illustrative. Have you used the web recently? I have. It's
         | bloated beyond any imagination to the point that Google now
         | says that 2.4 _seconds_ to Largest Contentful Paint is fast
         | now: https://blog.chromium.org/2020/05/the-science-behind-web-
         | vit... (this is from 4 years ago, it's probably worse now).
         | 
         | You don't have to go far to see either Youtube loading 2.5
         | megabytes of CSS on desktop to the founder of Vercel boasting
         | its super fast sites that take 20 seconds to load the moment
         | you throttle it just a tiny bit:
         | https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1735338533303259571
        
           | Karrot_Kream wrote:
           | You're making the same mistake the post did. It depends on
           | the reader already having sympathy for the idea that bloat is
           | bad in order to make its case. I can read nerd site comments
           | all day that lament bloat. For an article to stand on its own
           | on this point it has to make the case to people who _don 't_
           | already believe this.
           | 
           | Dan's articles have usually been very good at that. The
           | keyboard latency one for example makes few assumptions and
           | mostly relies on data to tell its story. My point is that
           | this article is different. It's an elevated rant. It relies
           | on an audience that already agrees to land its point, hence
           | my criticism that it's too couched in internet fights.
        
             | liveoneggs wrote:
             | State your case that bloat is _good_. I currently have a
             | client who will do literally anything except delete a
             | single javascript library so I 'd like to understand them
             | better.
        
               | jodrellblank wrote:
               | Joel Spolsky on Excel bloat, 2001:
               | https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-
               | letter-iv...
        
               | jiggawatts wrote:
               | The latest version of Excel loads faster on my laptop
               | than most websites do. I've timed this.
               | 
               | I can load the entire MS Office suite _and_ open a Visual
               | Studio 2022 project in less time then it takes to open a
               | blank Jira web form.
               | 
               | What's your point?
        
       | troupo wrote:
       | Also related: Performance Inequality Gap 2024
       | https://infrequently.org/2024/01/performance-inequality-gap-...
        
       | ryukoposting wrote:
       | I only recently moved from a 6-year old LG flagship phone to a
       | shiny new Galaxy, and the performance difference is staggering.
       | It shouldn't be - that was a very high-end phone at release, it's
       | not _that_ old, and it still works like new. I know it 's not
       | just my phone, because the Galaxy S9s I use to test code have the
       | same struggles.
       | 
       | I would like to have seen Amazon in the tests. IME Amazon's
       | website is among the absolute worst of the worst on mobile
       | devices more than ~4 years old. Amazon was the only site I
       | accessed regularly that bordered on unusable, even with
       | relatively recent high-end mobile hardware.
        
         | eric__cartman wrote:
         | I have noticed with two 7 year old Snapdragon 835 devices that
         | RAM and running a recent Android version makes a huge
         | difference.
         | 
         | I daily drive a OnePlus 5 running Android 14 through LineageOS
         | and the user experience for non-gaming tasks is perfectly
         | adequate. This phone has 6GB of ram, so it's still on par with
         | most mid-range phones nowadays. My only gripe is that I had to
         | replace the battery and disassembling phones is a pain.
         | 
         | Meanwhile a Galaxy S8 with the same SoC, 4GB of memory and
         | stock Android 9 with Samsung's modifications chugs like there's
         | no tomorrow.
         | 
         | I can understand that having two more gigabytes of memory can
         | make a difference but there is a night and day difference
         | between the phones. Perhaps Android 14 has way better memory
         | management than Android 9? Or Samsung's slow and bloated
         | software is hampering this device?
         | 
         | Either way it's irritating to see that many companies don't
         | test on old/low-end devices. Most people in the world aren't
         | running modern flagships, especially if they target a world-
         | wide audience.
        
           | hinkley wrote:
           | This is what I miss from the removal of serviceable
           | components on MacBooks. Was a time I would buy the fastest
           | processor and just okay memory and disk, then the first time
           | I got a twinge of jealousy about the new machines, buy the
           | most Corsair memory that they would guarantee would work, and
           | a bigger faster drive. Boom, another 18 months of useful
           | lifetime.
        
             | lotsofpulp wrote:
             | Is the total useful lifetime more than MacBooks with non
             | serviceable components? I see people around me easily using
             | Airs for 5+ years.
        
               | kome wrote:
               | My MacBook Air (11-inch, Early 2014) is my only computer.
               | I still don't feel like changing it so far...
        
         | zuhsetaqi wrote:
         | Interesting that you have such problems with Amazon. I'm using
         | an iPhone XR (5,5 years old) and don't have any problems using
         | Amazon in the browser (Safari). And I'm on the latest iOS
         | (17.4).
        
         | seam_carver wrote:
         | I have no issues with Amazon on my iPhone 8 running latest iOS
         | 16
        
         | Accacin wrote:
         | Did you try disabling JavaScript on Amazon? It actually doesn't
         | function too badly. I know, I know, you shouldn't need to do it
         | and I agree.
        
       | ericra wrote:
       | As someone with recent experience using a relatively slow Android
       | phone, it can be absolutely brutal to load some web pages, even
       | ones that only appear to be serving text and images (and a load
       | of trackers/ads presumably). The network is never the bottleneck
       | here.
       | 
       | This problem is compounded by several factors. One is that
       | older/slower phones cannot always use fully-featured browsers
       | such as Firefox for mobile. The app is takes too many resources
       | on its own before even opening up a website. That means turning
       | to a pared-down browser like Firefox Focus, which is ok except
       | for not being able to have extensions. That means no ublock
       | origin, which of course makes the web an even worse experience.
       | 
       | Another issue is that some sites will complain if you are not
       | using a "standard" browser and the site will become unusable for
       | that reason alone.
       | 
       | In these situations, companies frequently try to force an app
       | down your throat instead. And who knows how much space that will
       | take up on a space-limited device or how poorly it will run.
       | 
       | Many companies/sites used to have simplified versions to account
       | for slower devices/connections, but in my experience these are
       | becoming phased out and harder to find. I imagine it's much
       | harder to serve ads and operate a full tracking network to/from
       | every social media company without all the javascript bloat.
        
       | MichaelMug wrote:
       | Since 2000, I've observed the internet shift from free sharing of
       | information to aggressive monetization of every piece of
       | knowledge. So I suspect that is the culprit. If you use the
       | mobile web on the latest iPhone you'll find its unusable without
       | an ad-blocker.
        
         | smokel wrote:
         | Hm, not entirely true, depending on what you mean with "the
         | internet shifting".
         | 
         | The internet has _grown_ , and the free sharing is still going
         | strong. Have a look at Wikipedia, Hacker News, Arxiv.org.
         | 
         | To be honest, the stuff that was shared freely in 2000 was not
         | all that great, and most of that which was, is still available.
         | Remember that you had to buy a subscription to Encyclopaedia
         | Britannica back then, and to all the academic journals.
         | 
         | Granted, there are some non-free information silos, but
         | generally I'm pretty happy with the procrastination advice on
         | Reddit being surrounded by annoying ads that drive me away.
        
           | Solvency wrote:
           | Google "Roche Ff7 rebirth". I was curious who this character
           | is. In 2000-2012 all the top links would be amazing fan sites
           | and forums describing, discussing, and detailing the
           | character with rich info.
           | 
           | Now it's all AI seo spam LADEN with data mining and ad boat
           | on monolithic sites like Fandom they barely work on the
           | newest iphone.
        
           | geraldwhen wrote:
           | And Britannica wasn't filled with highly moderated
           | propaganda.
           | 
           | Wikipedia is a failed experiment.
        
             | permo-w wrote:
             | Wikipedia is great, it's just not as good as it could be
        
           | ibz wrote:
           | Encyclopedia Britannica was on CDs, not on the internet. I'm
           | old enough to remember.
        
             | smokel wrote:
             | _> In 1994 Britannica debuted the first Internet-based
             | encyclopaedia. Users paid a fee to access the information,
             | which was located at http://www.eb.com_
             | 
             | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Encyclopaedia-Britannica-
             | En...
             | 
             | (Be warned, there are ads on that page.)
        
         | permo-w wrote:
         | the tragedy of the commons
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | Perhaps these people are better off by running a web browser on a
       | remote machine and interfacing with it over VNC.
        
         | wmf wrote:
         | Who's going to pay for that server? We're talking about $50-100
         | phones here.
        
         | ericra wrote:
         | This is trolling, right?
         | 
         | Lemme just give my grandma a list of instructions for doing
         | this so she can get to Facebook. I'll let you know how it works
         | out.
        
           | wmf wrote:
           | Obviously you'd want to productize it (see WebTV, Mighty
           | browser).
        
         | hexo wrote:
         | webdevs and their managers should use these web "apps" on bad
         | machine over VNC on a slow connection for a few months. these
         | javascript hellpages are basically crime against humanity and
         | do contribute a lot to e-waste, pollution and carbon dioxide
         | emissions
        
       | olliej wrote:
       | It's not just slow devices, it's also any time you have any kind
       | of weak connectivity.
       | 
       | I think every OS now has tools to let you simulate shitty network
       | performance these days so it's inexcusable that so many sites and
       | even native apps fail so badly anytime you have anything less
       | than a mbit connection or greater than 50ms latency :-/
        
         | layer8 wrote:
         | It's not just weak connectivity. I know people in rural areas
         | who still have less than 1 Mbps internet speed over their DSL
         | landline. Using the internet there isn't a lot of fun.
        
           | olliej wrote:
           | Which is absurd when you think that the internet used to be
           | usable on 14.4k modems.
           | 
           | I remember having to plan to take up hours of time on our
           | phone line to download giant files that were smaller than
           | many basic webpages these days (ignoring things like photos
           | where there's obviously a basic size/quality tradeoff + more
           | pixels)
        
       | efields wrote:
       | How web bloat impacts users: negatively. Better do your best to
       | fix it.
       | 
       | This stuff is simpler than we let it be sometimes, folks.
        
         | withinboredom wrote:
         | > This stuff is simpler than we let it be sometimes, folks.
         | 
         | Meanwhile watches a team build a cathedral when all they needed
         | was a shack.
        
       | ugjka wrote:
       | Here is how you do web: https://forum.dlang.org/ Observe the
       | speed
        
         | c2xlZXB5Cg1 wrote:
         | What a refreshing experience.
        
         | throw_m239339 wrote:
         | Or HN. All that talk about "brutalist web design" yet most
         | websites are more bloated than ever...
        
           | MaxBarraclough wrote:
           | 'Brutalist web design' is a pretty small niche though, no?
           | It's the kind of thing Hacker News readers will have heard
           | of, but I don't think it was ever close to mainstream.
        
         | Solvency wrote:
         | Ironically the modern web, built by programmers, is scorned by
         | programmers. You all collectively, persistently, shamelessly
         | decided AngularReactNodeWebpackViteBloat 200mb asynchronous
         | hellspawn websites needed to be made this way.
         | 
         | When all this time, lightweight CSS and anchor links and some
         | PHP was all we needed.
        
           | RGamma wrote:
           | *built by techbros
        
         | ildjarn wrote:
         | This loads faster than native apps serving local content on my
         | device.
        
           | yen223 wrote:
           | For me, it took an estimated 3-5s to load on first visit.
           | Fast, but not "faster than native apps"
           | 
           | The second time round it loaded almost instantly.
           | 
           | I'm guessing there's some caching going on.
        
         | xyst wrote:
         | How crude. I can't even post gifs. This is basically a
         | glorified e-mail client, but with extra steps. No social media
         | integration? What is this 2004? It's not even decentralized
         | like matrix.
         | 
         | Can't even post inline videos, bro.
         | 
         | \s
         | 
         | Jokes aside, I do miss this type of interaction. Especially for
         | open source projects. It made finding solutions to common
         | issues much easier when documentation was lacking or has not
         | been updated in a long time.
         | 
         | Now all or most projects have adopted some form of: discord
         | channel, slack group, subreddit, twitter. I remember searching
         | for my similar issue in a slack channel only to realize the
         | chat history has been limited because the owners did not pay
         | the extra amount to archive messages beyond what was given for
         | free.
        
       | jauntywundrkind wrote:
       | These sites can and should be much better. Yes. Definitely.
       | 
       | At the same time, while a 10s load time is a long time &
       | unpleasant, it doesn't seem catastrophic yet.
       | 
       | The more vital question to me is what the experience is like
       | after the page is loaded. I'm sure a number of these sites have
       | similarly terrible architecture & ads bogging down the
       | experience. But I also expect that some of those which took a
       | while to load are pretty snappy & fast after loading.
       | 
       | Native apps probably have plenty of truly user-insulting payloads
       | they too chug through as they load, and no shortage of poor
       | architectural decisions. On the web it's much much easier to see
       | all the bad; a view source away. And there is seemingly less
       | discipline on the web, more terrible and terribly inefficient
       | cases of companies with too many people throwing whatever the
       | heck into Google Tag Manager or other similar offenses.
       | 
       | The latest server-side react stuff seems like it has a lot of
       | help to offer, but there's still a lot of questions about
       | rehydration of the page. I'm also lament see us shift away from
       | the thick-client world; so much power has been embued to the
       | users from the web 9.9 times out of 10 just being some restful
       | services we can hack with. In all, I think there's a deficiency
       | in broad architectural patterns for how the thick client should
       | manage it's data, and a really issue with ahead-of-time bundles
       | versus just-in-time & load behind code loading that we have
       | failed to make much headway on in the past decade, and this lack
       | is where the real wins are.
        
         | Karrot_Kream wrote:
         | Yeah this is exactly the kind of nuance I'd love to see
         | explored but as you say, auditing native apps is difficult, and
         | it's really hard to compare apples to apples unless you can
         | really compare equivalent web and mobile apps.
        
       | nhggfu wrote:
       | re: Wordpress - with which theme? benchmarked on default theme
       | they give away free like "2024" or whatever ?
       | 
       | obvs a good coder optimizes their own theme to get 100% score on
       | lighthouse.
        
       | throw_m239339 wrote:
       | Every company stopped caring, especially the companies who were
       | at the forefront of standards and good web design practices, like
       | Google and Apple.
       | 
       | Google recently retired their HTML Gmail version, mind you, it
       | still worked on a 2008 256MO RAM Android phone with an old
       | Firefox version and it was simply fast... of course the new JS
       | bloated version doesn't, it just kills the browser. That's an
       | extreme example, yet low budget Phones have 2GB of RAM, you
       | simply cannot browser the web with these and expect reasonable
       | performances anymore.
       | 
       | Mobile web sucks, an it's done on purpose, to push people to use
       | "native" apps which makes things easier when it comes to data
       | collection and ad display for companies such as Apple and Google.
        
         | lukan wrote:
         | "Mobile web sucks, an it's done on purpose, to push people to
         | use "native" apps which makes things easier when it comes to
         | data collection and ad display for companies such as Apple and
         | Google."
         | 
         | Partly for sure, but Amazon for example? Or Decathlon? (a big
         | sports/outdoor chain in europe)
         | 
         | Their sites are just horrible on a mobile (or in Decathlons
         | case also on a Desktop, that is not high end), but they also
         | don't offer me their app in plain view, so I have to assume it
         | is just incompetence. The devs only testing everything on their
         | high end devices connected to a backbone.
        
       | timnetworks wrote:
       | 68k.news loads fine, it's probably that the people writing your
       | applications are not great at their jobs?
        
       | legulere wrote:
       | Missing text styling impacts all users. The text is hardly
       | legible. You really don't need much styling (bloat) to get a good
       | result, as demonstrated on http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com
        
         | anthk wrote:
         | Contrast is good.
         | 
         | https://bestmotherfucking.website/
        
         | bensecure wrote:
         | addressed in the article
        
       | sylware wrote:
       | google web engines (blink/geeko) and apple web engines with their
       | SDK are sickening. They are an insult to sanity. They well
       | deserve their hate.
        
         | tredre3 wrote:
         | The engines are perfectly fine.
         | 
         | It's the websites/web developers that are the problem.
        
       | zac23or wrote:
       | Nobody, nobody, nobody cares about old hardware, performance,
       | users, etc. if anyone cared, React wouldn't be a success. The
       | last time I tried to use the react website on an old phone, it
       | was slow as hell.
       | 
       | LetsEncrypt is stopping serving Android 7 this year. Android 7
       | will be blocked from 19% of the web:
       | https://letsencrypt.org/2023/07/10/cross-sign-expiration The
       | option is to install Firefox.
       | 
       | Users with old hardware are poor people. Nobody wants poor people
       | around, not even using their website.
       | 
       | "Fuck the user", that's what we heard from a PO when we tried to
       | defend users, imagine if we tried to defend poor users.
        
         | supertrope wrote:
         | I think Let's Encrypt made a heroic effort. They deployed a
         | hack to support Androids long abandoned by the operating system
         | maintainer and manufacturer. If you want to blame LE for the
         | breakage then also blame: GOOG for using the IBM PC clone
         | business model without a device tree standard, QCOM for selling
         | chips but very quickly cutting support, the manufacturer, and
         | cellular carriers who prefer to lock you into another 24 month
         | installment plan than approve an update for your existing
         | handset.
        
           | zac23or wrote:
           | > If you want to blame LE for the breakage then also blame
           | ...
           | 
           | Of course they are also guilty. LE isn't the most to blame in
           | reality, it's just an example that old hardware isn't
           | important to decision makers.
        
         | robocat wrote:
         | > PO
         | 
         | What's the acronym?
         | 
         | Unfortunately acronyms are context sensitive and many users
         | here are not in your context... Maybe try to avoid using
         | acronyms!
        
           | gkbrk wrote:
           | Product owner?
        
           | zac23or wrote:
           | Product Owner
        
         | jiggawatts wrote:
         | The problem is that this attitude infects even government
         | departments, which ought to serve all citizens, not just the
         | rich ones.
        
       | mik1998 wrote:
       | I often use a Thinkpad X220 (which still works for a lot of my
       | usage and I'm not too concerned about it being stolen or damaged)
       | and the JS web is terrible to use on it. Mostly resulted in my
       | preference of using native software (non-electron), which
       | generally works perfectly fine and about as well as on my "more
       | modern" computer.
        
         | jwells89 wrote:
         | Whenever I pull out old machines I'm a little shocked at how
         | responsive they are running a modern OS (Win10 or Linux), so
         | long as the modern web is avoided. Anything with a Core 2 Duo
         | or better is adequate for a wide range of tasks if you can find
         | non-bloated software to do them with.
         | 
         | Even going back so far that modern OS support is absent,
         | snappiness can be found. My circa 2000 500Mhz PowerBook G3
         | running Mac OS 9.1 doesn't feel appreciably slower than its
         | modern day counterpart for more than one might expect, and some
         | things like typing latency are actually _better_.
        
           | anthk wrote:
           | A Core Duo it's perfectly fine with an ad blocker:
           | 
           | git://bitreich.org/privacy-haters
        
       | Thorrez wrote:
       | Okta has a speed test?
        
         | wmf wrote:
         | Presumably Ookla.
        
       | tdudhhu wrote:
       | Not only the user is affected by this.
       | 
       | The difference between a 2MB and a 150KB CSS file can be a lot of
       | bandwidth.
       | 
       | The difference between a bad and good framework can be a lot of
       | CPU power and RAM.
       | 
       | Companies pay for this. But I guess most have no clue that these
       | costs can be reduced.
       | 
       | And some companies just don't care as long as money is coming in.
        
         | supertrope wrote:
         | A lot of companies don't care about end user performance
         | experience. Companies will burden issued PCs with bloated anti-
         | virus, endpoint monitoring, TLS interception, Microsoft Teams,
         | etc. If there's no explicit responsiveness goal, then
         | performance dies by a thousand cuts.
        
         | afavour wrote:
         | Eh. Cloudfront pricing starts at 8.5c per GB and goes down to
         | 2c. I think you'd struggle to use that pricing as a
         | justification when compared to the software engineer hours
         | required to shrink down a CSS bundle. (don't get me wrong, 2MB
         | is insane and ought to be a professional embarrassment. But I
         | think you're going to struggle using bandwidth bills as the
         | reason)
         | 
         | I agree with you about frameworks, though. So much waste in
         | creating everything as (e.g.) a React app when there's no need.
         | Sadly the industry heavily prioritises developer experience
         | over user experience.
        
       | Devasta wrote:
       | If you don't have a good phone and a high speed connection, you
       | don't have any money to spend on either the sites products or the
       | products of their advertisers.
       | 
       | When looked at from that angle, bloat is a feature.
       | 
       | It's not reasonable to have an expectation of quality when it
       | comes to the web.
        
         | LAC-Tech wrote:
         | Huh? I have a 5 year old, mid range android, and I still buy
         | things online.
         | 
         | Not everyone cares about phones.
        
           | blauditore wrote:
           | Also, there are some websites targeting users with little
           | money as well.
        
         | Uehreka wrote:
         | Well that take sure goes from 0 to 60 real fast. Can you really
         | be sure that only people with good phones and connections have
         | money to spend? Just to poke some obvious holes: what about old
         | rich people who have a distaste for modern phones but spend
         | lavishly on vacations every year? Or outdoorsy rich people who
         | are frequently in areas with poor cell coverage but are
         | constantly purchasing expensive camping/climbing equipment? How
         | about people who aren't rich, but work for companies where
         | their input is part of a purchasing process with millions of
         | dollars of budget? Those people are all super-lucrative
         | advertising targets, I don't think advertisers are
         | intentionally weeding them out.
        
         | jhanoncomm wrote:
         | I think you are close to the truth there.
         | 
         | But I doubt companies purposely increase their hosting costs as
         | some kind of firewall to only include the rich. More like they
         | just don't care. Same reason for technical debt, everyone wants
         | to grow and move needles.
         | 
         | If a company could magically make their site more available and
         | efficient for free I am sure they would jump at the chance. But
         | spending a million on that vs. a million on ads wont seem worth
         | it.
        
         | politelemon wrote:
         | This is addressed in TFA and is not true. The bloat is a
         | symptom of what I've seen referred to as the "laptop class" and
         | is unrelated to any feature adjacent.
        
       | bluquark wrote:
       | Dan's point about being aware of the different levels of
       | inequality in the world is something I strongly agree with, but
       | that should also include the middle-income countries, especially
       | in Latin America and Southeast Asia. For example, a user with a
       | data plan with a monthly limit in the single-digit GBs, and a
       | RAM/CPU profile resembling a decade-old US flagship. That's good
       | enough to use Discourse at all, but the experience will probably
       | be on the unpleasantly slow side. I believe it's primarily this
       | category of user that accounts for Dan's observation that
       | incremental improvements in CPU/RAM/disk measurably improve
       | engagement.
       | 
       | As for users with the lowest-end devices like the Itel P32, Dan's
       | chart seems to prove that no amount of incremental optimization
       | would benefit them. The only thing that might is a wholesale
       | different client architecture that sacrifices features and polish
       | to provide the slimmest code possible. That is, an alternate
       | "lite/basic" mode. Unfortunately, this style of approach has
       | rarely proved successful: the empathy problem returns in a
       | different guise, as US-based developers often make the wrong
       | decisions on which features/polish are essential to keep versus
       | discarded for performance reasons.
        
         | jhanoncomm wrote:
         | If all the sites tot more efficient it may also increase
         | longevity of laptops and PCs where unsavvy people might just
         | "need a new computer it is getting slow".
         | 
         | Also applies to bloatware shipped with computers. To the point
         | where I was offered a $50 "tune up" to a new laptop I purchased
         | recently. Imagine a new car dealer offered you that!
        
       | zdw wrote:
       | Is this new or old reddit being benched?
       | 
       | That would be an interesting direct comparison.
        
       | nolist_policy wrote:
       | Next try out the search engines.
       | 
       | Anecdotally, Google Search loads ~500ms faster than DuckDuckGo on
       | the OG Pinephone.
        
         | jhanoncomm wrote:
         | That is one performance metric. What about energy use and
         | loading search results not just the home page. I find DDG
         | faster from a perception point of view. I imagine on sone
         | metrics it is faster.
        
           | nolist_policy wrote:
           | Sorry, should have been more precise. I was measuring loading
           | search results. E.g.:
           | 
           | https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-e&q=test9999
           | 
           | vs.
           | 
           | https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ftsa&q=test9999&ia=web
        
       | AlienRobot wrote:
       | I'm glad people remember what WW in WWW means. :)
       | 
       | It makes me very sad to see that reddit's new design is so heavy
       | it can't even be accessed by part of the world. It's like parts
       | of the internet are closing theirs doors just so they can have
       | more sliding effects that nobody wants.
       | 
       | Or maybe I'm just a weird one who prefers my browser to do a full
       | load when I click a link.
       | 
       | Btw there was a time everyone kept talking about "responsive" web
       | design and, having used only low-end smartphones and tablets, I
       | kept finding it weird that there was such focus on the design
       | being responsive for mobile devices when those mobile devices
       | were so extremely slow to respond to touch to begin with. Of
       | course I know that's not what they meant, but it still felt
       | weird.
        
       | anthk wrote:
       | A simple text site such as Reddit and some Digg clones are nearly
       | unusable under an Item ATOM with a JS based client.
        
       | maxloh wrote:
       | YouTube is one of the slowest websites I have ever used.
       | 
       | It takes several seconds to load, even with moderate hardware and
       | fast internet connections.
        
         | jhanoncomm wrote:
         | Reddit for me is the slowest site. And while old.reddit fixes
         | this they try to steer you back to main reddit at any
         | opportunity!
        
       | INGSOCIALITE wrote:
       | web bloat also impacts my sanity
        
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