Is that really the central problem though? Or is it that there is so much cruft?
Most every time I try to load a web page my sole aim is accessing a little plain text and perhaps a picture or two if clearly relevant and illustrative. But (if it weren't for ublock or the like), for the few KB of the content I actually want I have to wade through irrelevant stock photos, autoplay videos, innumerable placements serving promotions/ads/clickbait, overlays, demands for entering my email address or logging in, social media icons and banners - and that's to say nothing of the stuff I don't see, the trackers and the scripts. Surfing the web like this is frankly a strain, one that we've accepted as normal because everyone does it.
If we serve cruft faster, certainly that will improve speeds, but those gains might simply motivate the powers that be to add more cruft so - just as the case with network speeds - we'll end where we started. We need to be radical and tear web pages down rather than merely focus on serving them faster through technical means.
Most every time I try to load a web page my sole aim is accessing a little plain text and perhaps a picture or two if clearly relevant and illustrative. But (if it weren't for ublock or the like), for the few KB of the content I actually want I have to wade through irrelevant stock photos, autoplay videos, innumerable placements serving promotions/ads/clickbait, overlays, demands for entering my email address or logging in, social media icons and banners - and that's to say nothing of the stuff I don't see, the trackers and the scripts. Surfing the web like this is frankly a strain, one that we've accepted as normal because everyone does it.
If we serve cruft faster, certainly that will improve speeds, but those gains might simply motivate the powers that be to add more cruft so - just as the case with network speeds - we'll end where we started. We need to be radical and tear web pages down rather than merely focus on serving them faster through technical means.