We actually do have auto-refreshed content standardised. <frame> instead of <section>, and <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="60; https://foo.bar/example-section" /> (where the URL to refresh from is optional).
The web could do all the things we really needed it to (except embedded video and games), a long time ago. But programmers wanted more natural ways of doing it, which converted a document format into an application framework into an operating system.
Yeah you're correct what i had in mind as more like dynamically loading new articles, for example for a webchat. Not "refreshing" as in reloading the whole iframe. Like built-in RSS but using semantic HTML.
> But programmers wanted more natural ways of doing it, which converted a document format into an application framework into an operating system.
I think it's more like hostile actors (including Microsoft itself) had so much of the market share that trying to standardize things was perceived as a lot of effort without success, despite lots of people trying. JS was the worst we could come up with, but everybody supported it more or less...
The web could do all the things we really needed it to (except embedded video and games), a long time ago. But programmers wanted more natural ways of doing it, which converted a document format into an application framework into an operating system.