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The purpose of this bot is to convert existing external links on Wikipedia, wherever possible, from HTTP to HTTP Secure (HTTPS), i.e. from an unencrypted to an encrypted transport protocol. There are three reasons for using HTTPS: (i) data is sealed from eavesdropping on the internet cable ( privacy) which also prevents censorship, (ii) data cannot be manipulated ( integrity), and (iii) data came from the correct source ( authentication). Rather than further elaborating (but have a look here), here are some news reports emphasizing the importance of each point.
As we discussed earlier, your ISP can't see what you do on an HTTPS-enabled website. For example, the ISP knows when you visit https://arstechnica.com, but it doesn't see which articles you're reading.
In fact, our study finds there was less censorship in June 2016 than before Wikipedia's transition to HTTPS-only content delivery in June 2015. [...] This finding suggests that the shift to HTTPS has been a good one in terms of ensuring accessibility to knowledge.
The tl;dr is for Android users to ensure they are encrypting their communications by using VPNs, [or] ensuring the sites they go to are encrypted [...]
The findings of this report also illustrate the urgent need for ubiquitous adoption of HTTPS by website developers.