Comment by pcthrowaway

Like, you're right that some, perhaps many, sites would continue using https, just like in the current situation, many sites continue supporting http (instead of just setting up a redirect)

No site needs to do this though, and I can't recall seeing a site with sensitive user info that supports http in recent years. And in the current situation, many sites are still supporting old versions of https (SSL2). A protocol name upgrade would give you more certainty that you're connecting over a secure connection, and perhaps a better indication if you've accidentally used a less-secure connection than intended.

I mean actually your exact argument could be made about http vs https, that http+SSL should have become the default (without changing the protocol name of http://), and by changing the protocol name it made it so that some websites still accept http. I guess in practice there's a slight difference since http->https involved a default port change and ssl2 -> tls did not, so in the former case the name change was important to let clients know to use a different default port; but ignoring that, the same argument could be made, and I would have disagreed with it there too.

Specifying the protocol... in the protocol portion of the URL... can be useful for users.