Of course, it is a trade-off, bells-and-whistles from rich GUIs are sexy, but the technical cost of such bells-and-whistles in a web context is grostesquely and absurdely unbalanced compared to what can be achieved with simple and consistent noscript/basic (x)html portals for any pertinent goal of a bazillions of online services.
The problem often lies with the client tantrums.
I was more talking about critical online services which have a duty of interop with Small Tech and must not force users into Big Tech engines only, that to keep the door open to alternatives of reasonable "size", and at the same time to lower significantly exit costs.
But that's smashing open doors, most are aware of those issues here on HN. The real issue is implementation: it has to happen in a regulatory framework, laws dealing with discrimination, and my lawer has been looking into other legal leverages (yeah, I have an open conflict with my administration). The regulatory framework is here, but lobby-ied heavily by Big Tech, making it ineffective and pointless.
A bit like what they have in the US with the "utilities" which then have much more regulatory duties than "non utilities". You also have anti-trust stuff: dominant corpos are much more tied to regulatory constraints, that to let alternatives to be viable (well, that does not seems to work very well in the US). In my country, anti-trust ultra-aggressive regulations did wonders in the telecom industry.
You can still have a web app with a rich GUI, an anonymous simple and stable in time public HTTP-based middleware protocol (which allows to develop Big Tech independent rich GUIs), etc, until the core functions are provided to noscript/basic (x)html browsers (if one thing must work, it is this one).
It is enough for a bazillion of online services, that without requiring a beyond insanely complex and massive web engine from Big Tech. basic HTML forms can do wonders.
Of course, you can have a full blown Big Tech web app, but don't forget to have a interop portal with noscript/basic (x)html browsers to avoid, at least for critical online services, Big Tech lock-in and unreasonable exit cost.
That said, it may be a good idea to be able to drive the display or not of <table> rules with the default styling (css or hardcoded) from the 2D semantic HTML document attributes (I should check the hardcoded style of links and lynx for <table> rules).
(I am not talking about the abomination of the "semantic" web we had a decade ago)