Shifting the Trap

Back in 2009, Richard Stallman warned us about The JavaScript Trap. The pitch was simple, and it's aged horrifyingly well. Every time you visit a modern website, your browser silently downloads and executes a pile of non-free JavaScript on your computer. You didn't choose this software. It runs anyway, on your hardware, in your name, and the moment your tab closes, it pretends nothing happened. It's the perfect non-free program: invisible, ephemeral, and authored by someone who would very much like you not to think about it at all. The response from the free software community has been to push back at the browser layer - LibreJS, NoScript, Trisquel's defaults, gentle public reminders that yes, that "web app" is a program, and yes, you are running it. Fine. Good. Necessary. Stallman's warning was directed at the browser because that is where, in 2009, the trap was being sprung. It's still being sprung there. But here's the part nobody seems to want to say out loud: the trap's been…