Dithering
Dithering is a form of image manipulation that, roughly, imposes a bandwidth filter to colors. In a certain sense, dithering is totally unnecessary, only interesting in the way one controls the noise introduced by the color filtering. However, it’s a whole aesthetic choice, regularly associated with the low-consumption internet/permacomputing movement.
I enjoy the effect very much and use it profusely over this website.
Aesthetic values of dithering
According to viznut (and if I understood well), the reason dithering and other methods of deliberate noise are popular accross the permacomputing/low-compsumption community is because it exposes the facct that we are using physical resources to produce a copy of something. Perfect fidelity only obscures the fact that we are looking at a digital object (that is supported by real infrastructure). Of course, the article makes a much more nuanced analysis.
References:
How to apply to a low tech website: https://homebrewserver.club/low-tech-website-howto.html
A summary on the specifics of the technique here: https://surma.dev/things/ditherpunk/
And the post by the author of the didder package I use profusely in this webpage:
https://www.makeworld.space/2021/02/dithering.html