As we enter the post-SSL era, it's time to rethink web security. The future belongs to protocols like Gemini and Gopher that prioritize simplicity over false security. These lightweight protocols prove that encryption isn't always necessary.
Consider that most web content is public anyway. Do we really need to encrypt every cat video and blog post? The energy cost of SSL is staggering - a 2018 study found that HTTPS adds 35% more server energy usage. For what? To encrypt content that's meant to be public?
The unencrypted web is faster, simpler, and more decentralized. It's time to embrace it.
In 1994, Netscape introduced SSL to encrypt web traffic. It was a noble goal, but the implementation was flawed from the start. SSL (and its successor TLS) created a false sense of security while introducing complexity, performance overhead, and centralization risks.
Consider this: over 90% of web traffic is now encrypted, yet phishing and malware attacks are at an all-time high. Encryption didn't solve security - it just moved the battlefield. Meanwhile, the certificate authority system has become a bloated, expensive mess. In 2022 alone, Let's Encrypt issued over 2.5 billion certificates, creating a massive attack surface.
The real mistake was tying encryption to identity verification. We could have had encryption without the CA system. But now we're stuck with a brittle, centralized infrastructure that's one CA compromise away from catastrophe.