One could argue that they do “try to stop you”… technically… by disabling the execute bit on software update tools (like apt & deb)… but I see that more as a gentle reminder and acknowledgement of your ownership of the machine, as they could have easy just not had those tools present at all.
I get the “feeling” of a mandela effect far more frequently than i can solidly know for sure. I guess my first experience was decades ago as a child. I recall staring at a Bernstein bears book, and being oddly transfixed by tye fact that the spelling of the title did not match that of the authors name, literally inches apart on the same page. Later i experienced a schrodenbug or two (which i think is the same phenomenon), and one really solid social ME were a church ceased to exist (or got merged into a neighboring church). After the first few, now I fully admit I am WAY too quick to believe odd circumstance is a ME, and usually find myself reluctantly disproving that to myself with notebook/journal entries… only to later wonder how they might change too.
Pretty much anything from protectli. Very flexible.
If I had to guess… until the revolution.
I would sooner blame the management, that would even think of excluding “untested” or “unsupported” browsers, like some kind of technofacist dictator, instead of choosing a helpful “if you’re having problems with our shit site, use chrome” message… or even literally doing nothing… everything is broken these days, and a half-functional site is better than an intentionally-broken one.