That word has some negative connotations, but I do not think that is fair, considering the cars, or the airplanes, history. We assume that the car we purchase has seat belts and catalytic converters which will prevent lots of injuries and effects on the climate and living things. These are mandated by laws in many places, and that is a good thing, because we can worry about the entertainment system, service deals, colour and style and still get a car that meets certain "basic" requirements. I say "basic" as they can be quite advanced, we would hardly buy a car without ABS or a crash rating today.
Computer programs and websites do not have to meet any regulations and they therefore easily succumb to bloat, because there is no one being blamed for them being unusable, which is broad, but a website over, say, 1MB is quite large. Plenty are wasting CPU cycles to render and compute, which might not be as polluting as exhaust from a car, but it is polluting and stealing time.
Early cars had to change oil very often or have it refilled, because it leaked in to the combustion chamber or gasses leaked out. This causes emissions to be quite hostile, which is bad because it affects the environment and living beings respiratory systems, among other things. We then got laws regulating this and manufacturers were keen to improve the performance of the engines. Today there are 1,6 liter, four cylinder engines that work well pulling loads and still manage to have a good fuel economy when driven under average conditions.
Another thing is that customers got fed up with steel wheels and rubber tires that blew out all the time and the wheels on our transports improved as well, but that took some years to happen, the Internet and personal computers are still quite young and immature, there is still time for it all to mature quite a bit, and this article is a good step on the way towards that in my opinion.
UX is maybe not as simple to regulate as cars and their emissions and safety standards but I would say that we should not be all to opposed to some more requirements or maybe even laws regarding how we operate computers and programs in some respects and let the market, users that is, dictate what is desired in other areas. We might like to think that the internet is the wild west, so to say, but this has led to some mighty bloat and headaches for all involved, as this article shines a light on.