There was a time when the browser was a reader.
You opened a page. You read. You left.
It asked nothing of you.
It assumed nothing about you.
There were no invisible observers.
No shadows watching your scroll.
No trillion-dollar ad empires trying to monetize every blink.
Harvesting every flicker of intent.
Studying every keystroke.
Every hesitation.
Every hover.
Every scroll.
So you can be understood and sold to.
All of it —
made possible by a new kind of software.
Built not to enhance.
But to extract.
It seemed harmless.
It was anything but.