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None of this is due to "modern web development". It's just about a dev not checking reasonable asset size before deploying/compiling, that has happened in web, game-dev, desktop apps, server containers, etc. etc.

This should be an SVG (a few kb after proper compression) or if properly made as a PNG it'd probably be in 20-ish kb.

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The dev not having the common sense to check file size and apparently not realising that the PNG format was being grossly misused for this purpose (by not even having a single tone of white for the J and the corners, let alone for the blue background) is modern web development.
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Right, so you mean that this is unique and inherent to web dev and specifically modern web dev.
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What is that noise actually? It's clearly not JPEG artifacts. Is it dithering from converting from a higher bitdepth source? There do appear to be very subtle gradients.
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I would bet it's from AI upscaling. The dark edges around high contrast borders, plus the pronounced and slightly off-colour antialised edges (especially visible on the right side of the J) remind me of upscaling models.
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Not even the white is pure. There are at least #FFFFFD, #FFFFFB and #FEFEFE pixels sprinkled all over the #FFFFFF.
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I'd bet that it's AI generated, resulting in the funky noise.
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Oh, ding ding! Opening in a hex editor, there's the string "Added imperceptible SynthID watermark" in an iTXt chunk. SynthID is apparently a watermark Google attaches to its AI-generated content. This is almost certainly the noise.
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Make it an SVG and it's down to 1kb.
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