Ultimately, there's nothing that says a saner web couldn't exist side-by-side with the modern one. We don't have to fork the browser, we just need to create a subgraph in the larger link network - a connected, searchable subgraph of sites that are document-oriented, machine-readable, that don't track or abuse you. A search engine limited to a certain criteria and perhaps some amount of curation would work as a way to define this subgraph.

No, this won't solve the web problem for everyone, but I think this is too tall a goal to have. Instead of trying to fix everything for the world at large, I feel we should be creating our own better subspace, and slowly let those who care come over.