zlacker

>>robbie+(OP)
The web went in the wrong direction when we abandoned the initial concepts of user agents, which was that the browser has the ultimate choice of what to render and how. That concept, transferred to today's world of apps would simply mean that any client like Apollo is essentially a browser locked on Reddit's website, parsing HTML (which has the role of an API) and rendering the content in a native interface. As long as the user can access the HTML for free, they should be able to use any application (a browser or a special app) and render the content however they wish.

Unfortunately with today's SPA apps we don't even get the HTML directly, but with the recent resurgence of server-side rendering we may soon be able to get rendered HTML with one HTTP request. And then the only hurdles will be legal.

>>danije+KI
> As long as the user can access the HTML for free, they should be able to use any application (a browser or a special app) and render the content however they wish.

You can see how the end game of this is HTML no longer being free, right?

>>paulco+x51
The worse case vision I have of the future internet in one in which content and advertising is hosted by the advertising companies and rendered via a web assembly system.

Content and advertising cannot be separated by IP and the site content is basically an application that is difficult to parse.