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Comment by marcosdumay | Hacker News Reader

I doubt this. Almost every website overrides all of the relevant CSS attributes, because the default is just atrocious. Changing the default won't impact them.

Anyway, the browsers still can update the CSS and add a "reverse read mode" button that changes it back.

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They override the CSS attributes that don't fit what they are doing now, but changing the defaults would introduce new attributes, which may not presently be overridden.

The modern approach is to do a universal rest:

  *, *:before, *:after {
    all: unset;
    display: revert;
    box-sizing: border-box;
  }

Would that actually work as a safeguard against this? What you're reverting and unsetting to is the very defaults we're talking about changing.

As I understand it, it won't protect you. What will protect is actually setting the value (and most sites do that, at least for those few commonly changed ones with bad defaults).

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