Web performance is a social and political issue

Every now and then, a series of posts on Mastodon that I’ve been meaning to share line-up.

Back in November, accessibility expert Adrian Roselli shared an article on internet speeds in the US, noting…

Regular reminder that even vast swathes of the US still have shitty internet connectivity: “One of Wisconsin’s most isolated places is finally getting fast internet”

Please consider this when choosing your framework, library, dependencies, third-party services, 9MB background images (looking at you, recent event), fonts, etc. Not everyone is using your high-end system, massive display, and fast connection.

Then, earlier this week, Gerry McGovern shared an article from Alex Russell on how bad web performance drives inequality…

“To serve users at the 75th percentile (P75) of devices and networks, we can now afford ~150KiB of HTML/CSS/fonts and ~300-350KiB of JavaScript (gzipped). This is a slight improvement on last year’s budgets, thanks to device and network improvements.

Meanwhile, sites continue to send more script than is reasonable for 80+% of the world’s users, widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots. This is an ethical crisis for frontend.”

This is important to remember when people say stuff like…

I follow you for tech, not politics.

Because friends, all tech is political. Being apolitical is political. If you think it’s not, that’s probably just because the politics don’t affect you.