[lmm]

You can't be confident of getting a stripped-down web page before you click the link. Trivial example: I can click a gopher link and be confident whatever's on the other end is not going to make a noise.

Human vigilance is fallible. Protocol-level enforcement is necessary.

[jasonkostempski]

I've been thinking about making a site that only takes links to text/plain and other non-mixed-media content. I haven't been able to find one if it exists. I'd also love search engines to support media type filters.

[olavk]

Are you suggesting there are some people who only browse Gopher?

[lmm]

There are people who prefer Gopher and/or particular known sites. If you can see from the URL that a site will be non-horribly designed then that's fine, and if the only option is HTTP then you put up with it.

[NoGravitas]

You could use a stripped-down client. There are currently compatibility problems (with using Lynx, elinks, dillo, etc), but most of those are probably surmountable. I can easily imagine a browser that guarantees either a reader-mode/AMP-like experience or a graceful failure.