Yeah, or even Gopher. I would love an app that lets me run custom scrapers to fetch content, or post my comments to threads about that content, on whatever sites that one of my scrapers can read or post to with my account details. For example, an "NYT article fetcher" could implement the "content module" interface, to fetch an NYT article, remove the paywall, and render it for me. Then a "reddit fetcher" and an "HN fetcher" could implement the "discussion module" interface to fetch reddit and HN comments about the NYT article. And then the app could merge it all together into a nice unified interface, and give me tools for posting replies to Reddit or HN, or whatever sites are supported by my installed discussion modules and my locally saved credentials.
Let developers create each "source" of content or discussions, packaged into a module ("NYT article fetcher," or "Reddit discussion fetcher"), and let me choose which modules to install. Then delegate the infrastructure for executing scrapers or curating feeds to a set of federated servers that I can opt into. Or better yet, execute the scrapers in a local sandbox on my own device, so that the NYT can't block me because my requests are my own. You could argue it's just another form of a web browser.
