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.

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.

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