Digital Disparities: A Comparative Web Measurement Study Across Economic Boundaries
Track: Web mining and content analysis
Keywords: Web development practices, Digital inclusivity, Security and Privacy
Abstract: While internet usage is slowly catching up globally, it is still unclear how the web experience differs in developing and developed countries. On the one hand, the web has a notoriously large inertia, with many websites still relying on unencrypted HTTP, deprecated web features, or old and buggy libraries. On the other hand, developing countries are expected to leapfrog and directly adopt the newest technologies by learning from the prior mistakes of more developed countries. Anecdotal evidence suggests that websites in developing and developed regions differ significantly. In this work, we test this hypothesis by measuring differences in web development practices across the two groups of countries, using multiple dimensions: websites' size, complexity, security, privacy, quality, technology adoption, and accessibility. Concretely, we collect the largest dataset to date that compares web development practices across developed and developing regions -- 200,000 websites across 20 countries -- which we aim to open source along with this publication. Our findings reveal that websites in developing regions are generally smaller and simpler, utilizing fewer requests — an adaptation that improves the performance over slower network conditions common in these areas. However, these sites are less optimized in other critical aspects: they frequently employ inefficient image formats, include unnecessary JavaScript code, lack responsive image designs, and offer limited accessibility features for individuals with disabilities. Notably, our security assessment shows developing regions lagging in HTTPS adoption and vulnerability mitigation, possibly due to lower awareness of best practices.
Submission Number: 1733
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