Hm, interesting. The HN thread doesn't seem to propose many solutions. Is this something a new modem would fix? Time Warner gave me a (very large and unattractive) modem. I have an old-ish Apple wireless router plugged into it.
It boils down to large pages with lots of bloat, analytics, ads, and formatting. So no, I don't think a new modem would fix it. Welcome to the modern web.
Of course, I could be wrong.