I'm very glad I don't touch web dev anymore. This piecemeal removal of features from one transport mode is exactly the sort of thing that causes clients (of the human, paying sort) to flip out when they misunderstand what is going on.
Don't get me wrong - I think this is a good thing. And I don't know that the answer is a big, publicized drop of all these changes at once, although that would have certain advantages. But a trickle of dropped features that non-technical folks will never see announced is going to be a lot of fun for web developers.
I don't really think the backlash is happening as you describe. There's quite a lot of public awareness about ongoing communications and privacy issues, and implementing SSL is extremely cheap in most cases. "We need to upgrade your security to keep things working, it will take a day" is a fairly straightforward sell in most cases.
Don't get me wrong - I think this is a good thing. And I don't know that the answer is a big, publicized drop of all these changes at once, although that would have certain advantages. But a trickle of dropped features that non-technical folks will never see announced is going to be a lot of fun for web developers.