But, obviously, the web hasn't gotten faster, because the increased bandwidth has been filled with increased nonsense, and browsers now download 2MB of nonsense

But, obviously, the web hasn't gotten faster, because the increased bandwidth has been filled with increased nonsense, and browsers now download 2MB of nonsense to show a 200-character text post. A 10KB page at 14.4kbps takes 5 seconds to download. A 2MB page on a typical 30Mbps connection take less than 1s (ignoring improvements latency, changes in TCP frame size, better line conditions, etc). Web pages are definitely much bigger, and arguably bloated with unnecessary junk, but they still download faster than they did in the 14.4kbps days. Bandwidth speed and page sizes don't explain why you think the web was faster decades ago. I think it's more likely that you're just wrong. I remember using the web in 1995 on a 28kbps modem (such speed!), and it was slow as hell. It was genuinely click-a-link-and-get-cup-of-tea slow a lot of the time. Not only wasy connection awful, a lot of hosting companies were slow too. Servers would throttle and kill sites that used too much bandwidth. Pages often failed to load compared to today. I still used it of course because it was amazing, but I didn't enjoy it. Surfing wasn't really possible. Uploading anything was a pipedream. When I went to uni in 1997 and got access to broadband for the first time it was a revelation. The web became truly useful. I had my first website up and running 3 months later and I've never looked back...