[wyqydsyq]

No you couldn't, with http vs https you are accessing the exact same resource, just through a different protocol.

[betenoire]

Not necessarily. I've written my share of rewrite rules that change behavior based on https vs http.

Imagining that were true, you would never be redirected to an https version of a page.

[kevinschumacher]

Well, if the org hosting the content is being nice and following convention, sure.

But, there's nothing stopping me from running a webserver listening on port 80 (so, accessed in the browser at http://example.com) that serves a picture of a baseball. I can also run a webserver listening on port 443 only (with SSL/TLS set up, so accessed in a browser at https://example.com), on the same machine, that serves a picture of a dog instead.

This sort of breaks the rules/conventions though because you expect the resource to be the same by nature of the URL you're using to access it. But nobody has to follow that rule

[jessaustin]

That's one way to set it up, but there's no guarantee of that. Servers may switch anything based on TLS status or really any other property of a client request.

[plaguuuuuu]

I agree with this. The people saying it's technically possible to get a different webpage at that resource address are missing the point - it's trivial to do A/B with the same site, same port, same protocol, based on user IP, time of day or a RNG.

The point of URL is to identify a single address owned by one guy. Removing the www subdomain means you have two addresses, possibly owned by two guys.

[effie]

The protocol name is part of the URL, so it is possible and technically valid that the https version leads to different content than the http version. Some things are certainly different, for example if there are ads and other linked resources on the https page, they all need to go through https, while on http page, there is no such requirement.