[adrianratnapala]

How much of this is actual desire by web publishers, and how much is just collective stupidity. Do they really want their websites to be a hassle to use? To have readers turn away because it doesn't load faster enough, or at all?

I think it is more likely that they just higher web-developers, according to some cultural norm about how to select devs and about what features to specify. And those devs choose frameworks according to other cultural norms about what makes a good web framework. They are partly, but not completely constrained in this by the requested features set.

The result is bloated JS applications where mere pages are required, but the complexity of the system, and the social inertia is so great that nobody can fix, or even perceive the problem.

[nine_k]

They want their websites to make more money. If this takes some more time to (eventually) load but results in increase of total income, they have all incentives to add the "bloat". You know, boarding a train or a bus could be so much faster if the checking of tickets were not involved.