Maintainers of "small web" servers are not being forced to use TLS. If you want to put a plaintext HTTP server on port 80 on the Internet, you can totally do that today with no issues. Sure, modern browsers like Safari and Chrome will show a "Not Secure" message in the address bar, but users are not prevented from getting to the website. Perhaps your site won't be listed on Google, but I think for small web that's acceptable.
That said, there's more to the web than just blogs and recipes. If I want to run a small web forum for enthusiasts of some hobby, I think it'd be irresponsible of me as a webmaster to run that from a microcontroller if it prevents my users from being able to securely authenticate without their password being revealed to prying eyes.
That said, there's more to the web than just blogs and recipes. If I want to run a small web forum for enthusiasts of some hobby, I think it'd be irresponsible of me as a webmaster to run that from a microcontroller if it prevents my users from being able to securely authenticate without their password being revealed to prying eyes.