The nature of this problem (that companies are able to track you) is not so much a technological problem, but an economical one. Even if gopher were the only alternative back then, it would have evolved just as HTML/HTTP did to support ads and tracking.
All a content provider that doesn't want to serve ads and tracking has to do is not implement it. While content creators are still bound to whatever their publishing platform chooses to do (e.g. any content on Medium is subject to Medium's tracking practices), using an inferior technology is simply not a realistic solution. This is essentially a human issue, technology has little to do with it.
You want to enable ad-free, tracking-free mass publishing? Provide a free publishing platform. The catch? Someone has to pay for it.
You don't want to be tracked? Disable javascript. Some sites stopped working? Oh yeah, tracking you is how they pay the cost (nominal or economical) for serving you content.
I would see merit however, in a search engine that allowed filtering for non-javascript friendly content.
All a content provider that doesn't want to serve ads and tracking has to do is not implement it. While content creators are still bound to whatever their publishing platform chooses to do (e.g. any content on Medium is subject to Medium's tracking practices), using an inferior technology is simply not a realistic solution. This is essentially a human issue, technology has little to do with it.
You want to enable ad-free, tracking-free mass publishing? Provide a free publishing platform. The catch? Someone has to pay for it.
You don't want to be tracked? Disable javascript. Some sites stopped working? Oh yeah, tracking you is how they pay the cost (nominal or economical) for serving you content.
I would see merit however, in a search engine that allowed filtering for non-javascript friendly content.