The internet has become more hostile since its early days, in multiple ways and one of those ways is that networks spy on you more. They used to inject ads into the content, but that stopped being profitable when the majority went to HTTPS. If they could do it again on a large scale they would. The NSA is also saving all the data they can. It's important to hide the content, now we have first-world countries using information about what you read to make life-or-death decisions. Encryption should now be seen as necessary.