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I'd rather spend a literal 6-character burden (alt="") to put an empty string in my little hobby projects than live in a world where non-hobby projects can skip adding alt.

It should be very clear by just looking around on the internet that, when given the choice, accessibility will take a back seat.

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I'm curious why you think that forcing people to write alt="" is going to improve accessibility?

Because that’s how screen readers know the image is decorative. It literally is/improves accessibility.

Additionally, the developer is more likely to actually write alt text when it's not decorative.

Although I must admit, I've also seen such rules leading to developers writing alt text for decorative images, and I'm not sure if that's much better.

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