Well, OK, but that's orthogonal to the question of: what is causing this bloat, and why is that considered sacrosanct, as opposed to the user's time and energy?

Well, OK, but that's orthogonal to the question of: what is causing this bloat, and why is that considered sacrosanct, as opposed to the user's time and energy? Reasonable people can disagree as to where that line is drawn, of course, but with sheerest garbage like Medium, where the putative goal is to give people something to read, it looks to me like they're driving a process for the sake of driving a process, and deserve to be mocked for it.