So it's pretty much impossible to trim the web down to a reasonable feature set, because the entire history of browser technologies is someone releasing a poorly designed API that's missing something important, then a later standard releasing a new layer of APIs that solve that hole in the design by being more powerful and flexible, but that one's also poorly designed and missing something important, repeat process 100 times. Each layer is more powerful than the last, which isn't what you want with a lighter browser, but then you go to the bottom of it and you can't have a three-column layout.
I could imagine creating a nice standard that replaces it from a clean slate, though.
You could also make a javascript library that renders the whole new standard, and just package your websites in that, though. That's awful, but the modern web is a nightmare, so similarly gross systems happen all the time, and it's not really worse than the status quo.
And then you could make a browser that, when it sees a page using that library, ignores it end renders the clean slate standard natively. Or, for the more ideologically motivated, only renders that sort of page.
But as fun of a technical challenge as that is, it's really a social challenge to get enough people using this weird new thing.
Do right wing gamers even like games? When you start really diving in and doing niche things, speedruns, modding, retro games, deep indie stuff - you know, shit that people who really really like games do - then you stop seeing right wingers and find yourself surrounded by queer trans furry communists.
There's phone Linux, but it's exactly the kind of tinkerers only/missing important apps/experts only experience that people insist on thinking desktop Linux is.
I think it's great if some former troop realizes that was wrong and starts working towards a better world as a rank and file member of the DSA or PSL or whatever.
But it's always some fucker whose first appearance in progressive politics is trying to run for office, isn't it?
So it's pretty much impossible to trim the web down to a reasonable feature set, because the entire history of browser technologies is someone releasing a poorly designed API that's missing something important, then a later standard releasing a new layer of APIs that solve that hole in the design by being more powerful and flexible, but that one's also poorly designed and missing something important, repeat process 100 times. Each layer is more powerful than the last, which isn't what you want with a lighter browser, but then you go to the bottom of it and you can't have a three-column layout.
I could imagine creating a nice standard that replaces it from a clean slate, though.
You could also make a javascript library that renders the whole new standard, and just package your websites in that, though. That's awful, but the modern web is a nightmare, so similarly gross systems happen all the time, and it's not really worse than the status quo.
And then you could make a browser that, when it sees a page using that library, ignores it end renders the clean slate standard natively. Or, for the more ideologically motivated, only renders that sort of page.
But as fun of a technical challenge as that is, it's really a social challenge to get enough people using this weird new thing.