[MuppetMaster42]

Chrome throttles background JavaScript by default (disables requestAnimationFrame entirely, reduces allowed runtime to around 1% of real time, etc) [1].

However disabling it entirely would break a lot of use cases.

Chat apps would stop working, push notifications would no longer come, web sockets would stop getting processed, feeds would not get refreshed. You'd break a lot of the web.

Doing so would force more companies to push out their own separate apps... Which would probably be electron (and I know how much HN hates electron).

[1] https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/03/background...