So they make the internet worse for poor people? I could get through 20k in a second, but someone with just an old laptop would take a few minutes, no?

i mean, kinda? you are absolutely right that someone with an old pc might need to wait a few extra seconds, but the speed is ultimately throttled by the browser

Well, it's the scrapers that are causing the problem.

Just wait till they hit my homepage with a 200mb react frontend, 9 seperate tracking / analytics scripts and generic shopify scripts on it :P

Isn't that just the way things work in general though? If you have a worse computer, everything is going to be slower, broadly speaking.