Do you know why I don't use TLS? Because getting a certificate is almost impossible for me and definitely not worth the hassle. I live in Iran, which as you may know is subject to financial and technological sanctions. It makes it impractical for us to buy anything from foreign countries because:
1. Because of the financial sanctions, it's nearly impossible to send money abroad. We can't have a wire transfer from our bank account to another country. We can't open an account in a foreign bank. We can't get an international credit card or open a PayPal account (as a matter of fact, PayPal has banned Iranian IPs. We can't even open the website).
2. Even if we somehow manage to send the money, we cannot expect a reliable service. More than once have tech companies, especially hosting providers, closed the account of all Iranian customers citing regulations. We try to stick to .ir domains or at least have one as fail-safe, use primarily Iranian hosting providers despite their much higher prices and avoid relying on foreign services at any cost.
I've seen here on HN that some people say cost is not prohibitive in adoption of TLS. It's only <single digit number> dollars on <CA name> after all. The cost is not the problem here. The act of paying is a barrier to entry for many people. That's why my university has a supercomputer, but you'll get an SSL error when you visit its website because it's self-signed.
1. Because of the financial sanctions, it's nearly impossible to send money abroad. We can't have a wire transfer from our bank account to another country. We can't open an account in a foreign bank. We can't get an international credit card or open a PayPal account (as a matter of fact, PayPal has banned Iranian IPs. We can't even open the website).
2. Even if we somehow manage to send the money, we cannot expect a reliable service. More than once have tech companies, especially hosting providers, closed the account of all Iranian customers citing regulations. We try to stick to .ir domains or at least have one as fail-safe, use primarily Iranian hosting providers despite their much higher prices and avoid relying on foreign services at any cost.
I've seen here on HN that some people say cost is not prohibitive in adoption of TLS. It's only <single digit number> dollars on <CA name> after all. The cost is not the problem here. The act of paying is a barrier to entry for many people. That's why my university has a supercomputer, but you'll get an SSL error when you visit its website because it's self-signed.