I think most of the web wasn't encrypted by default until letsencrypt came on the scene just over a decade ago. (I remember a few "free cert" offerings that were entirely manual, and cost you $200 if you wanted to revoke a cert)
It's firmly the default now, and very odd if a site doesn't default to https.
Back when they still had staffed support, and were called twitter, I'd have to spend a week or more back and forth with them when I inevitably hit the demand for a phone number. Most of the time the account got unlocked.
This was usually a few weeks/months after they were in the news for selling people's phone numbers.
The main advantage of x forwarding for me was when I'd randomly need it and had nothing set up ahead of time. Hopefully it starts getting installed in distros by default eventually.
They're on the die. efuses existed on the ps3 and 360 too.
The 360 used them to prevent downgrades, but the ps3 used all of theirs to store bluray drive keys.