Certainly the problem can be seen as one of clients. The "modern web browsers" are instruments for fueling the dumpster fire. For the web, I wrote my own "user agent". A client that has zero intelligence however it is fully under the user's control. The intelligence lies with the user, not the third party authors of the client (with their business purposes and conflicts of interest).
A stream of sewage can still be shined into liquid gold by a sufficiently intelligent client, that chooses what to ingest and what to ignore.