The Hobbyist Internet is the Amateur Radio of XXI century
Amateur radio strives as a niche hobby. Clubs are actives and while the average age of radio amateurs is well over 60, there is a steady stream of newcomers. States and international organizations recognize the importance of nourishing amateur radio communities and there are endless possibilities to excel in this space.
In contrast, none yet cares about the possible demise of the hobbyist internet. It all started with phasing out HTTP in favour of HTTPS for good reasons: ISPs and network providers in some places of the world were injecting ads into HTTP pages. Big content providers and the general public wanted to stop that. They could have gone the legislative route but a technical solution to force all websites to use HTTPS was easier to implement. It was enough for Google to hint that it will penalize HTTP websites over HTTPS in search results, and everyone started to happily switch over to HTTPS.
Things did not stop there, though.
Browsers show content served over HTTP as not secure, making HTTPS the "default" and HTTP the visibly dangerous option, they limit many web APIs to sites served over HTTPS, they block or upgrade mixed-content by default (HTTPS sites cannot request HTTP-only resources anymore), they require HTTPS for HTTP/2 and HTTP/3, they increasingly attempt HTTPS to a site first even if linked or typed as HTTP, they warn about downloads over HTTP, and they're continuing to ratchet up such measures over time.
Lately, WhatsApp completely stopped opening HTTP urls.
This is an old fart's rant but it is none the less true.