So they make the internet worse for poor people? I could get through 20k in a second, but someone with just an old laptop would take a few minutes, no?

i mean, kinda? you are absolutely right that someone with an old pc might need to wait a few extra seconds, but the speed is ultimately throttled by the browser

adding to this, some sites set the difficulty way higher then others, nerdvpn’s invidious and redlib instances take about 5 seconds and some ~20k hashes, while privacyredirect’s inatances are almost instant with less then 50 hashes each time