Because of #GDPR, USA Today decided to run a separate version of their website for EU users, which has all the tracking scripts and ads removed. The site seemed very fast, so I did a performance audit. How fast the internet could be without all the junk! 🙄
5.2MB → 500KB
5.2MB → 500KB
They went from a load time of more than 45 seconds to 3 seconds, from 124 (!) JavaScript files to 0, and from a total of more than 500 requests to 34.
look at this!
To the people saying they've had the same fast experience for years because they use ad blockers like uBlock Origin: With uBlock enabled, the performance score improves from 3 to 11/100. 37 JS files are still loaded and loading time is 21sec. The main JS file alone is 399KB.
The Verge shows a tracking-consent message when visiting the site from the EU. Most people will click "I Accept" to make it go away, but if you don't and hide the message via CSS, you won't be tracked and the site is way faster:
32 vs 5 secs load time
61 vs 2 JS files
2 vs 1 MB
32 vs 5 secs load time
61 vs 2 JS files
2 vs 1 MB
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