I too mourn the failure of the open web to gain traction, but I don't think you've identified the causes correctly.
1) I disagree that the modern web has degraded this experience much, if at all. If anything, the tools today are much better, easier, and more mature. Perhaps there's a few extra steps now, but Apache today is much easier to use than Apache in 1996, including things like installing it from a package manager. If you don't consider things like NearlyFreeSpeech and DigitalOcean "walled gardens", these have gotten much better as well. A few years back, I spent 30 minutes installing Wordpress and my completely nontechnical father was able to build a website. So no, things have not gotten harder, they've gotten easier. HTTPS perhaps makes things minimally harder, but many hosts will set up HTTPS for you with a free support ticket these days.
2) Removing the burden of HTTPS, and indeed removing the burden of a great many other things, still wouldn't bring you close to the ease of entry of Facebook or other walled gardens. Even though entry into the open web has gotten easier, it there has been a migration away from the open web because the closed web is so much easier. This isn't a problem that will be solved by getting rid of HTTPS. It's a problem that will only be solved by hacking open source software that does what Facebook et al does.
1) I disagree that the modern web has degraded this experience much, if at all. If anything, the tools today are much better, easier, and more mature. Perhaps there's a few extra steps now, but Apache today is much easier to use than Apache in 1996, including things like installing it from a package manager. If you don't consider things like NearlyFreeSpeech and DigitalOcean "walled gardens", these have gotten much better as well. A few years back, I spent 30 minutes installing Wordpress and my completely nontechnical father was able to build a website. So no, things have not gotten harder, they've gotten easier. HTTPS perhaps makes things minimally harder, but many hosts will set up HTTPS for you with a free support ticket these days.
2) Removing the burden of HTTPS, and indeed removing the burden of a great many other things, still wouldn't bring you close to the ease of entry of Facebook or other walled gardens. Even though entry into the open web has gotten easier, it there has been a migration away from the open web because the closed web is so much easier. This isn't a problem that will be solved by getting rid of HTTPS. It's a problem that will only be solved by hacking open source software that does what Facebook et al does.