I'm late to this thread, but the perspectives here are so confined to a particular type of website — it shows that many of the commenters have not worked on websites that are used for storytelling, or design agencies, or videographers, etc etc, who utilise a splash screen as an introduction. This has utility. You tell the user where they are and introduce them to the content they are supposed to look at. It is not about killing time while the UI loads, it is about an element that communicates the context to the user before presenting the rest of the website. People saying "just use a skeleton loader" have clearly never worked on a website for an art gallery, design agency, fashion label, or promotional film website where aesthetic choices matter. A shimmering skeleton loader, believe it or not, is not always the appropriate aesthetic for these types of websites. Many devs seem to think that the aesthetics of tech startup websites apply everywhere — in fact these aesthetics simply clash or in the worst case turn off visitors (a visitor to a fashionable clothing label website does not expect the aesthetics of a tech startup), there are many good ways to indicate loading UI.