[sprinkly-dust]

I would disagree that a smartphone without a working camera is perfectly usable. A lot of the world — especially in developing countries — runs on QR Codes for everything from restaurant menus to electronic payments. Without a camera, other stuff too, like KYC, just doesn't work. These are the sorts of changes that, as you mentioned, are forcing people to use smartphones. And they rely on the camera.

[sublinear]

QR codes can be unreliable and unnecessary to convey a URL. That's why I said "an image is never the only format available". If it's a deliberate thing people must pay attention to, the friction is already too high.

Most QR codes are not permalinks. Nobody wants to print out another one or retry scanning with better lighting only to find it doesn't work. When it really matters the link is dynamic and invisible. It's baked into a script your phone runs when you perform a more interesting higher level task in an app, tap-to-pay when you arrive, etc.