[aseipp]

HTTPS also guarantees integrity of the content; even for read-only sites it's important to ensure content isn't modified, code isn't injected, etc. There's an argument that a protocol which does integrity-checks only (without data encryption) might be good, that's the NONE cipher in TLS but it was removed in TLS 1.3 I believe; but it wouldn't fundamentally change the problem with 15yo operating systems lacking the software support or whatever.

(More broadly though the operational overhead of software is really high these days in a lot of ways. I think that's true of anything, not just HTTPS, but there are a lot of other historical factors leading to that.)

I think it's a bit of a leap to suggest that just doing things like banning mass surveillance would magically make systems more stable or make 15yo operating systems suddenly relevant on the net again. We'd probably still need a lot of the stuff we have in place already. However, I suggest we try it anyway because there's only one way to find out and oh well we won't lose anything valuable anyway.