About 10 years ago, we warned about the danger that the internet will become a privacy unfriendly place, due to bad behavior of Big Tech.
We more or less predicted that time, that Javascript would become required.
https://dev.webonomic.nl/breaking-the-bad-internet
https://dev.webonomic.nl/breaking-the-bad-pushing-a-worse-internet-part-ii
And now in 2025, 10 years later, Google just did that.
So when you visit an URL you get zilch info, a blank page, you need to give Google a permission to execute unknown code on your computer to see any content. That is of course breaking the internet. What is the use of an url when there is no content?
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=why%20is%20Javascript%20required
<noscript><style>table,div,span,p{display:none}</style>
<meta content="0;url=/httpservice/retry/enablejs?sei=xXXX_XXXxx" http-equiv="refresh">
<div style="display:block">Please click <a href="/httpservice/retry/enablejs?sei=xXXX_XXXxx">here</a> if you are not redirected within a few seconds.</div>
</noscript>
Yes there is a collection of scripts, but that is no information.
Please read our older posts:
- https://dev.webonomic.nl/breaking-the-bad-internet
- https://dev.webonomic.nl/breaking-the-bad-pushing-a-worse-internet-part-ii
- https://dev.webonomic.nl/security-by-design-following-the-right-principle
Everybody that is surprised by the latest developments of Trump 2.0, Twitter/X and Facebook dropping any form of self-control/fact-checking on the news nonsense they publish or the lies they spread, it has never been the goal of Social Media firms to spread or publish info, the real goal is to collect (personal) data.
So lowering the amount of info is not what they want, the want to spread more info, because then they can sell more adds, and the more controversial the info is the more response you get etc. The more adds you can sell.
So why the big investment in AI?
Create more info -> spread more info/nonsense -> sell more adds -> collect more data.
Remember what we wrote 10 years ago:
What social media buttons really mean, is: please share your social network, tell us the names of all your friends and please share your online presence with us.
A “JavaScript wall” is an extreme version of a “cookie wall.”
Scripting can form an integral part of an application. Web browsers that do not support scripting, or that have scripting disabled, might be unable to fully convey the author’s intent.
So when the Internet guidelines clearly state:
If it is not possible to make the page usable without scripts, provide a text equivalent with the NOSCRIPT element, or use a server-side script instead of a client-side script, or provide an alternative accessible page as per checkpoint 11.4.
https://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/#gl-new-technologies
https://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/#tech-alt-pages
Google had a usable page without Javascript, they just killed it. All because gathering user info is more important then serving info. Think about that.