When I read something like this, I come away feeling sad. It's a well-intentioned essay, written by someone who understands why websites are slow. It pleads wit

When I read something like this, I come away feeling sad. It's a well-intentioned essay, written by someone who understands why websites are slow. It pleads with readers to not make their websites slow and preserve their sovereignty on their own domains. I'm not sad about any of that. I'm sad because the author skips right past a key point: how we got here. Why are websites slow, when there are good reasons to want to be fast? In my opinion, this isn't some kind of cosmic accident. It's not because most people building websites don't care or are incompetent. Slow websites are, to my mind, a symptom. The disease is that there are economic incentives to do the things that make websites slow. Well-intentioned software engineers and web developers who like fast, light, clean websites are often not positioned to win the political battles required to cut unnecessary elements, third-party scripts, and so on. Openness and respect for user privacy are wonderful, incredibly appealing things. I don't think I've ever been able to lean on then to convince other parts of a company to forego revenue, reach, or measurability. This could easily be an effect of my limited skills of persuasion. I hope others have had different experiences.