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How broken is today's frontend culture? A friend points out that the median *mobile* page is now larger than a copy of DOOM (2.6 MiB vs. 2.48 MiB), the 75th percentile page is more than 2 DOOMs, and the P90 mobile page is 4.5x the size of DOOM: httparchive.org/reports/page...

The people that need to engage with this type of post most bounce off of headlines like this. I love these blog posts, but the typical defensive reactions are so common at this point that I wonder how we can better get people to rethink their positions here?

e.g. literally in this same thread, commenter points out that pages / features are more complex. They're right (to a degree), and yet miss the point that the end-result is still a poor user experience at the margins. I've been struggling with this comms issue now. Do you have any thoughts?

My approach has been to lean into the data, which works for some, but in much of the discourse polarizes further and makes people *more* defensive/look for strawman arguments. I think the comms issue is more nuanced than it might appear prima facie.

FWIW I don't have answers here, just observations as someone else closely monitoring the narrative around frameworkism vs performance, etc.

My goal is to seed the ecosystem with the information we need to understand the scale of the problem because solutions will likely be structural, not individual. Preaching regulation, not recycling bins, so it's largely immaterial if individuals bounce off it: infrequently.org/2025/11/perf...

The information is incredible, as always, thanks. I agree solutions need to be structural, though is there not room for both? I've been involved in activism of some form for 15 years and there's usually a need for both individual (e.g. grassroots) and structural (regulatory) movement.

To be sure, that doesn't mean *you* need to do both. I love the info, as I said! I'm more trying to point out that I see a lot of grumpy people on both sides talking past each other, hence less polarization and adding clarity to the issues may be beneficial.

To be honest, I feel what had the biggest real-world impact here is Astro, which managed to position and market itself as a sort of Next.js replacement for the same crowd, kinda sneaking in MPAs through the backdoor into the mainstream discourse.

I agree Astro is a blessing. I actually think there's a lot happening here for people who are tuned into the space. Astro and Marko 6 come to mind, but also lots of interest outside the immediate JS-ecosystem (Lustre, 11ty, etc) + more focus on progressive enhancement (Svelte, Enhance, etc).

Hopefully there's enough of a butterfly effect causing people to ask questions about how they build web experiences.

It's fine, and a decent push. I do want to convince, but you'll have to remember that I started down the softly-softly path more than a decade ago. I'm only this strident now because that did not work; the influencers selling lemons *know better*, and I'm under no obligation to protect them.

Indeed, the fact that I was so quiet and back-channel oriented back then helped the rot take hold. Huge brands adopted business-limiting tech, and instead of making a public issue of it, I continued to help remediate behind the scenes. I regret not pulling the alarm sooner.

There will be a space for persuasion, and I hope that structural change will create more teachable moments into which that work can succeed. But the assholes that are hurting this ecosystem will not find an unwitting ally in me any longer.