Are modern front-ends ethical?

[u/Rare_Motor_9176]

At its core, the Internet has been about knowledge sharing, specifically through documents.

Front-end frameworks and libraries have augmented the web tremendously, and definitely for the better.

However, among poorer people, resources like faster network connections and higher end devices are hard to come by. So your fancy SPA React app may not work well due to asset bundle size, animations, rerenders, memory management.

To avoid these issues, progressive enhancement and graceful degredation should be implemented. This means that if the assets (JS, CSS) were to fail there would still be some sort of usable HTML document lying underneath.

A lot apps (mine included) rely on tremendous amounts of JavaScript and polyfills. Yet I'd you were to view the source HTML, you would see that one mounting div and that's kind of it.

I guess what I'm getting at is, even with SSR React, etc, isn't the way we treat the document as the afterthought kind of unethical? Should we be making our work accessible to all first and then enhancing it later? It seems like a lot of the time web sites are developed the other way around (let me use create react app and then solve the SSR and accessibility later).

Thoughts?

EDIT

I totally get that I'm talking about a very small portion of Internet users. But the discussion I'm trying to have is really about how we can ethically build the web.

EDIT 2

A lot of people claiming there are no ethical questions involved in this. I respectfully disagree with that contention.

One of the founders of Reddit actually believed that information should be accessible to all and swiped tons of academic articles off of jStor. That was a matter of ethics regarding access to documents.

I'm wondering if there is a similar, albeit far less concerning, issue regarding massive amounts of JavaScripting, reworking browser tech like history to fit into SPA frameworks, and the like. Idk. Look at the pad-left issue. One error broke countless sites. I have a feeling the wrath of that bug would have been lesser had many sites relied on graceful degradation.

EDIT 3

Thanks to everyone who took the time to respond. Even if we disagree or you think I'm a total idiot, I appreciate the discussion.

[u/CreepingBeauty99]

You don't need a blazing fast connection or a brand new computer to run a react site. And nearly everyone has access to a smartphone capable of loading a simple react-based restaurant site thanks to free smartphone programs etc. This is a non-issue. The fix for this isn't too avoid using modern frameworks, it's to improve infrastructure and make sure people have access to modern devices at home, school, the library, or wherever. There's far more value in that

It is literally impossible to exist in modern society without involving something unethical somewhere in the supply chain. You can't manage the ethics of your work on such a microscopic level. You'd never do anything at all.