gtys
Re:Chrome’s address bar will use https:// by default
on Tuesday March 23, 2021 @11:47AM (#26556416)
It's in the article:
"For sites that don’t yet support HTTPS, Chrome will fall back to HTTP when the HTTPS attempt fails."
I hope the slippery slope stops here though and HTTP will not be eradicated in browsers (in which case one would need corporate permission and approval to publish anything).
s_client or curl are not a suitable workarounds for the masses ...