The mostly JS-less web was fine, fast, and reliable 20 years ago and I never had ActiveX.

I hear stories about Flash and ActiveX but I literally never needed these to shop or pay bills online. Payments also didn't require scripts from a dozen domains and four redirects..

Yup, and taking payments online was awful but privacy was more of a thing. In South Korea ActiveX was required until recently. https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/10/south_korea_activex_c...

The platform isn't the problem. The problem is with the amount of code that does something other than letting you "pay bills, order tickets, etc.".