The Performance Inequality Gap, 2023

To serve users at the global P75 of devices and networks, we can now afford ~150KiB of HTML/CSS/fonts and ~300-350KiB of JavaScript (gzipped). This is a slight upgrade on last year's budgets, thanks to device and network improvements. Meanwhile, web developers 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. Meanwhile, the most popular tools and frameworks remain in stubborn denial, but reality is not moved by ignoring it: when digital is the default, slow is exclusionary.