At this point node_modules is just the npm equivalent of an open carry state.
I wouldn’t be surprised if GitHub just gave npm away sometime soon.
@andrewnez I hope not, it would make things worse

@andrewnez to who? Hoping it's not an extraordinarily bad actor. In the current sense.

I don't use npm intentionally, never have. But it's inescapable. Unless every thing you write is pure vanilla javascript.

@kristinHenry @andrewnez isn't that the dream. A web without 500mb JS frameworks.