Oh, there's worse. Some video chat apps encode in software. The magical browser APIs don't always give you enough control to do what you want with the video stream, so they just output the video stream into a hidden canvas, screenshot the canvas 20 times a second, and throw the frames at ffmpeg.js ...

Or just have browsers disable javascript by default and require explicit permission to use it.

90+% of web pages shouldn't need it for anything.

Or make a dead-slow subset that doesn’t eat cpu cycles, but schedules 10-20 ops every 1ms. And then enable full-speed if the user asks. Ads guys would then resurrect a demoscene spirit out of it. Ah, dreams.

I'd be a lot more in favour of ads if they had more copper effects and shadebobs.

Easy, install Edge.

https://therecord.media/microsoft-silently-enables-super-dup...

Although I guess this isn't the answer you're looking for.

lol. This reminds me of IE's "Enhanced Security Mode" where they disabled pretty much everything in the browser. This was pre-configured on Windows Server (probably still is). The browser is pretty much useless in this state, so the only way to get what you needed from a browser was to make it "unsafe." Too unsafe for servers with experienced tech people using them, but just fine for the general public on a desktop.