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HTTPS isn't a signifier of content quality, so mandating it would not be 'good' in any sense that's relevant to the community.

For the same reason Hacker News doesn't categorically ban articles behind a paywall, provided a workaround exists.

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I wasn't either trying to correlate HTTPS to content quality. It was an analogy. The way it's mentioned in the Guidelines of HN, https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, that the submission should gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. In the similar way, HN should add in the Guidelines that it will only allow HTTPS links. Again, no correlation with quality and HTTPS. The way it's mandated is the suggestion.

My point was that unless it did result in an improvement in quality, there would be no reason to do it.

And as has been mentioned elsewhere, it would probably be a net negative for quality since potentially good articles would be banned.

Rightly said. Can we not push "good articles" running in HTTP towards transitioning it to HTTPS? Definitely we may lose those articles during that phase, but a probable security risk can be avoided. A thought.

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