Yeah, that's pretty much my thinking, though I left the reasoning out for a jokier response.

It's impressive that Linktree can even pitch something as simple as a list of links as a service. You really don't need more than basic code literacy to type that up and get it online, but a generation of limiting such knowhow is apparently good for corporate business.

ANYHOW... Ease of coding and publishing is step one, and I completely agree with your points about avoiding third party assets like fonts or scripts. Anything with a database is overkill for this.

Keep it simple, keep it local. Heck, to keep it real simple you just let your visitor's browser use the default system fonts. You probably don't need any scripts either for a page like this.

You literally need a single HTML file, a single CSS. So depending on your images (if you use them, always resize and save for web) you can serve up a page of a few kilobytes. That should load in no time flat anywhere in the world.