In a game black usually has some time to play their first move which doesn’t count towards their main time. I generally have no issue with the fact that this doesn’t apply to white. However, for correspondence games, specifically those in a tournament, I think this should apply to white as well.
For correspondence games outside of tournaments, if white is taking too long to make their first move then black can just cancel without consequence. For games that are a part of a tournament, this of course will have a consequence. Currently I’m in a tournament with a person who is timing out of all their games. For games where they were black the games ended after three days because they failed to play their first move. In the games where they are white, it’s been almost three weeks and the game won’t end for another week.
I suspect the reason I gave for the first move timer for white is very different to the reason black is given such a timer, but I still think it is a good idea. I don’t think it’s necessary outside of tournaments either. If this is implemented it won’t stop all timeouts and it won’t mitigate the damage from all timeouts, but it will mitigate some of the annoyances caused by one category of timeouts. I don’t think this would place an unfair burden on white either.