The author suggest HTTP/2 as a solution to web cruft.
I could be wrong, but I see the HTTP/2 ploy as a proposed way to deliver more cruft, faster.
What do you think is going to be in those compressed headers? How large do HTTP headers need to be? What exactly are they trying to do? I look at headers on a daily basis and most of what I see is not for the benefit of users.
We can safely assume the compressed headers that HTTP/2 would enable would have nothing to do with advertising?
Again, I could be wrong, but in my estimation the solution to web cruft (unsolicited advertising) is not likely to come from a commercial entity that receives 98% of its revenue from web advertisers.
The web cruft problem parallels software bloat and the crapware problem (gratuitous junk software pre-installed on your devices before you purchase them).
The more resources that are provided, e.g., CPU, memory, primary storage, bandwidth, the more developers use these resources for purposes that do not benefit users and mostly waste users' time.
This is why computers (and the web) can still be slow even though both have increased exponentially in capacity and speed over the last two decades. I still run some very "old" software and with today's equipment it runs lightening fast. The reason it is so fast is because the software has not been "updated".