Using the modern web doesn't feel empowering. It feels immensely frustrating.
The web is barely usable without ad-blocking. Pages take an age to load and the content jumps around as more ads download and display. Also the ads are spying on you.
The entire JS ecosystem is dependency hell and sometimes you have to download massive JS files just to view a web page. The JS is probably also spying on you.
Worse still, JS is also probably why the Back button doesn't work properly on so many sites.
@neilalexander
Simple. Web companies don't exist to give you content; they exist to send you ads. Any other idea is merely a delusion.
Sometime we were fooled with the idea of FREE CONTENT, and flew to it like flies to honey. Instead, they caught us in a trap of adverts and cookies and trackers. Before we knew it, power shifted from service providers to advertisers.
WE put them in power. WE sold our souls to them, WE clicked on "agree". It was us who ruined the web.