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Discussion on: 🌱 How I realized my website was affecting climate change 🌡️

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xwero profile image
david duymelinck

I 'm sorry but this post sounds like greenwashing to me.
A lot of people are becoming aware we are ruining the ground we walk on. And you try to use it as a way to sell your performance tech skills?

If you said you are doing performance for user experience and search engine optimalisation, I would have believed you. Who is going to visit a site if isn't on the first or second page of a search engine? Who is going to return to a site where the images are loading like you are on a dail-up modem?

Most servers are hosted in a server farm. Ironic use of the word farm because it has nothing to do with nature. They use a lot of power and water, have you thought about those environmental consequences?

I use all those things, so I'm not the good guy here. I like to improve performance for the users that visit the websites I work on. I like to improve performance so that the clients I work for get more business and/or exposure.

I'm not going to save hungry ice bears, or oil covered animals by improving the performance of websites. If you really think like that, try to think a little bit harder. Thinking is what drives developers to become better.

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michelebitetto profile image
michelebitetto

Most companies don't think about performance, that's the problem. Many websites don't pay particular attention to performance and still end up on the first pages of Google. Think of all the companies that use heavy images, download a lot of extra data in many cases. It shouldn't be taken for granted. I'm not selling myself as a perfect developer on performance, I'm just saying that we need to be careful about the useless data we load into our software every day. And then Yes, I also thought about green hosting, fundamental today and fortunately many hosting companies offset their emissions, these two things must come together. I think that each of us must do our part in this, those who underestimate the problem are wrong because the internet affects 4% of global pollution and I'm sure. There are the green web foundation and the green software foundation for these purposes, I recommend you take a look

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xwero profile image
david duymelinck

I found an article with that figure, climate.selectra.com/en/environmen.... The global pollution you are talking about are greenhouse gasses. Internet is a global utility of course it is going to produce emissions.
And what is the biggest problem with the internet in that article, video. They don't mention websites.

You are right big brands don't optimize their websites, even search engines don't optimize. But all the little sites like yours and mine should?

What does offsetting mean? I always found it fishy. I produce that amount of emissions so I'm going to buy clean air/plant some trees, or something like that. It's the, it is better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission, mantra.

I'm not saying you shouldn't care about the environment, but be pragmatic about it.
Like I said before do all the optimising that you want but do it for the users, do it for the clients. Don't believe all the marketing.