[gremy0]

That's a problem with your phone company not websites, 500MB really isn't enough for using the modern web.

Also since when exactly did websites have a mandate to economise to the scale of mobile data? It's always been edge case unless you are specifically targeting that.

[oarsinsync]

> Also since when exactly did websites have a mandate to economise to the scale of mobile data? It's always been edge case unless you are specifically targeting that.

Trends towards mobile-first have been a thing for a while. Especially in developing countries where mobile users outweigh desktop users.

Targeting desktop is slowly becoming the edge case for anything targeting a mass audience. Look at a lot of the recent high-value tech companies. Do Uber/Snapchat/Whatsapp/Instagram target desktop or mobile first?

Where are users in general spending the majority of their time? On a desktop/laptop, or on a phone/tablet?

[gremy0]

Mobile-first is designing for a mobile interface. I quiet clearly stated "economise to the scale of mobile data". That is, supporting users on heavy mobile data restrictions.

Users, regardless of device used, are primarily on wifi and that is what is designed for. In modern countries most users don't really have data restrictions low enough to come into effect through websites so going into the future this will not be a problem.

[germanier]

Which countries would that be? As far as I know there are strict data restrictions basically everywhere (apart from legacy plans). You get about 10 of those "modern" websites a day with 1 GB which is for example what US's Sprint "Unlimited" plan offers you.

[gremy0]

Most of Asia and Europe. The American plans are so expensive and restrictive they don't reflect the current state of the technology at all. That's what's causing all this 'crisis' scaremongering. 1GB is a fairly basic plan over here and for that you can expect to have to watch your usage.

[oarsinsync]

I was in Hong Kong last year and I was looking at limited data plans then.

I'm in the UK and the only network offering unlimited data is so slow you'll struggle to use more than 3GB in a month.

I've since given in and just paying through the nose for 16GB/month, so that I can not have to watch my data usage. (Un?)fortunately, the network is so fast I've found my data usage is already around 9-10GB/month, so I'm going to have to start watching that again soon.

[germanier]

Then please tell that my German and French mobile providers. While cheaper than their US counterparts I still have to watch my usage. China also has basically the same prices (not adjusted for income parity!). I know that especially north and east of Germany the plans are significantly less restrictive but that's far from universal.

Apart from laziness there is no reason for those websites to be so large.

[gremy0]

Apart from greediness there is no reason for data to be so expensive...

Sure there's always room for an amount of optimization and good practice but it's insane to rely on that instead of fixing the problem. The growth in page size has been fairly linear and predictable.

The real headline here should be "German and US carriers cannot keep up with natural growth in technology"

[WA]

500 MB could be enough. As I said, if I need a bigger plan, unoptimized websites have economic consequences. I heard mobile-first is a thing. It doesn't seem too far stretched to assume that users and thus potential customers might be interested in fast-loading websites.

See, what this boils down to is this: People use Adblockers, because they're tired of all that shit that's consuming their bandwidth (at least on mobile). Content publishers complain about people using Adblockers. But they're not willing to get the technical side of their content consumption platform right in order to accommodate their very visitors. They cry foul but are part of the problem obviously.

Unfortunately, I don't get to see what links to avoid (size-wise) before I download all the bloat and waste my bandwidth.

[gremy0]

Yeah 500 MB could be enough if technology regressed (which it isn't going to). You're going to need a bigger plan regardless as 500 MB is nothing and mobile internet features are become more rich and ubiquitous.

The growth of website size has been fairly steady, if anything the growth has flattened over the last year or so. It is up to the infrastructure to keep up with that.

In the last year or two we've had the introduction 4G with 2-4 times the speed of 3G and you expect to have the same usage allowance?

[anteht]

For people in the developed world with good technology infrastructure, yes. But it's also quite inconsiderate to tell people to upgrade their dataplan (which for some people might be a financial limit) instead of trying to think of better ways to reduce cruft and unnecessary data transfers.

[gremy0]

It's quiet inconsiderate to tell developers to optimize for outdated bandwidth caps (which for some may be extra time, cost etc that they don't have).

You should expect to have to increase you dataplan every few years (because technology) whether that cost is absorbed by you or your phone company is a conversation to have with them.

[CaptSpify]

The problem is that devs are putting more effort into making websites bloated. They'd have more time if they got rid of cruft

[mirimir]

But whatever, most of what 500MB isn't enough for is useless to users. So why should they pay more to get it?