It's only insane if you subscribe to the idea that the 5 kibibytes of content is the purpose of a news or other site. Maybe as a user that's what you came for, but from a business perspective the purpose of the piece is to sneak 2 mebibytes of crap into your life. The snr on that is much better.

It's only insane if you have the tools to look at what's happening under the hood. Most people don't have any idea.