I re-read the article, it has one valid point in that it helps folks with really really bad internet connections.
This reminded me of the story when a YT (?) engineer optimized the page containing the video itself and serving rates for the crappiest video encodes went through the roof. It made using the site actually possible.
Reducing memory consumption, or maybe fixing 20+ year old bugs would have a much larger impact.
Reminds of when Mozilla killed APNG because it would add 100k to the binary. Literally the bandwidth savings on the first damn use of the feature.