I'm not sure if it's ironic or intentional, but I find it funny that they talk about these points while not having HTTP redirect to HTTPS on their own site, presumably because it's using a self signed certificate.
For the longest time, this introduced the ecosystem to professional certification authorities, which are essentially profit-oriented organisations that gauged prices.
Let´s Encrypt made some of the situation slightly better, opening up small websites to encryption, but you are still dependent on an external CA and the goodwill of the browser manufacturer to distribute their root certificate with their browsers.