JavaScript

JavaScript

Basic Information
Release Year	1995
Product Type	Software
In Production	Yes
Official Website	https://openjsf.org/

JavaScript (JS) is a programming language and core technology of the Web, alongside HTML and CSS. It was created by Brendan Eich in 1995. As of 2025, the overwhelming majority of websites (98.9%) uses JS for client-side webpage behavior. It's even used on the server-side (see Node.js).

Consumer-impact summary

Overview of concerns that arise from the conduct towards users of the product (if applicable):

• User Freedom
• User Privacy
• Business Model
• Market Control

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Incidents

Add one-paragraph summaries of incidents below in sub-sections, which link to each incident's main article while linking to the main article and including a short summary. It is acceptable to create an incident summary before the main page for an incident has been created. To link to the page use the "Hatnote" or "Main" templates.

If the company has numerous incidents then format them in a table (see Amazon for an example).

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This is a list of all consumer-protection incidents related to this product. Any incidents not mentioned here can be found in the JavaScript category.

Example incident one (date)

Main article: link to the main CR Wiki article

Short summary of the incident (could be the same as the summary preceding the article).

Example incident two (date)

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External links

• LibRedirect explaining why it exists, and how Google Chrome's MV3 limits it
• https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/06/22/navistone-form-data
• https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/06/27/web-without-javascript
• https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/01/18/google-search-javascript
• https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025/javascript-required/
• https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/17/google-begins-requiring-javascript-for-google-search/
• https://serpapi.com/blog/google-now-requires-javascript/
• Google being anti-competitive towards Firefox: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/discussions/3240
• Meta refusing to serve content to noscript users, and deliberately nagging them to install the app or login: https://github.com/Rudxain/uBO-rules/pull/9
• Websites that nag users to enable JS, even when it provides negligible value
• Discord being extremely bloated to the point of crashing when opening Developer-tools: https://github.com/Rudxain/uBO-rules/blob/42220bd4f80052ee15136dff7269df19529c43ec/rx.ubo#L3-L19
• "Enough with the JavaScript already!"
• "Maybe we could tone down the JavaScript"
• "You don't need JavaScript for that"
• "You really don't need all that JavaScript, I promise"
• "Progressive Enhancement Still Important"
• https://www.w3.org/wiki/The_principles_of_unobtrusive_JavaScript
• "Everyone has JS, right?"
• "Shipping a button in 2026…", by Kai Lentit. This illustrates the burnout and fatigue software developers can experience on a daily basis
• HTMX developer advocating for less JS
• "Web Obesity Crisis"
• "How web bloat impacts users with slow connections"
• JS bloat (2024)
• How JS makes web apps more unstable
• GNU/FSF explaining why JS takes freedom away
• GNU/FSF explaining why "web apps" shouldn't exist. WARNING: contains overzealous claims! (according to Rudxain). Related: Local-first
• Interactive page (game?) showing how websites can track almost anything the user does
• "Browserize" fingerprinting showcase
• "CreepJS" fingerprint showcase
• More sources (TO-DO)

See also

• Electron
• Mozilla