requests 2.24.0 uses the ssl module except if it doesn't support SNI, in this case searx fallbacks to pyopenssl.
searx logs a critical message and exit if the ssl modules doesn't support SNI and pyOpenSSL is not installed.
searx logs a critical message and exit if the ssl version is older than 1.0.2.
in requirements.txt, pyopenssl is still required to install searx as a fallback.