This seems like an extraneous tetchy comment but I don't think it is. Extant slow internet connections would be a lot more usable if websites weren't full of vi

This seems like an extraneous tetchy comment but I don't think it is. Extant slow internet connections would be a lot more usable if websites weren't full of video/audio adverts, trackers, and JS being used for stuff (displaying text/images or doing some awful and slow scrolling) that browsers do well natively. Try using the internet (beyond HN or gmail or pinboard) on a mediocre internet connection without any adblocker or noscript-equivalent. It gets nasty very fast. To be fair, this isn't a justification for not building out better last-mile links -- just like, the miserable state of residential internet connections in the US is made a lot worse by awful bloated websites. https://danluu.com/web-bloat/ https://danluu.com/web-bloat/ and http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm are good reads on this.