The key to what I'm envisioning is that it wouldn't break a site like ESPN entirely -- it would just break the SPA behavior by making links behave like links. T

The key to what I'm envisioning is that it wouldn't break a site like ESPN entirely -- it would just break the SPA behavior by making links behave like links. The end result is that the site would be more usable, not less. For sites where SPA behavior is necessary (like Spotify), opting in could be done with a one-time browser prompt, like how location access and DRM playback are handled. This seems like a more realistic solution than just avoiding these sites altogether, for the same reason that people use ad blockers instead of just shunning sites with ads.