Like the TSA at the airport.
Security that we never needed before, but now suddenly we do.
Now we’re dependent on a third party gatekeeper for permission to have a web site.
Free, for now.
It’s a move by the weasels-that-be to turn the Internet into yet another tool for profit and control.
I have HTTPS on all my services and the only third-party involved is Let’s Encrypt.
If I really wanted to, I could create my own authority and certificates, and as long as people connecting to it trusted my authority they’ll have encrypted and trusted connections without any third party involved.
Yeah, there’s ways around it for sure, so it’s not the end of the world.
I’m not super technical though, so as my hosting provider uses Google for HTTPS authentication I’ll just reluctantly stick with that for now. Of course I could have found a different provider, but I found it a somewhat difficult market to navigate. I’m enough of a rookie that part of me is just happy things seem to be working - when I set up the website a few months ago I kind of assumed HTTPS was some black magic stuff that I would never manage to implement.