Firstly, DNS is how web addresses are looked up to find their location in terms of IP addresses. So it is actually surprising that this lookup has always been unencrypted. The issue has become mainstream of sorts when UK’s Internet Service Provider’s Association nominated Firefox as an internet villain for enabling DNSOverHTTPS (DoH). This allowed people to bypass DNS based blocking performed by ISPs which further cemented the idea that one needs encrypted DNS to avoid being censored or worse MITMed by an authoritarian government by using domain level blocking.