docker + nginx http requests not working in browsers - django

Question

I have a AWS EC2 instance running Linux with docker containers running gunicorn/django and an nginx reverse proxy.
I don't want it to redirect to https at the moment.
When I try to reach the url by typing out http://url.com in the browser it seems to automatically change to https://url.com and gives me ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED. The request doesn't show up at all in the nginx access_log.
But when I try to reach it with curl I get a normal response and it does show up in the nginx access_log.
I have ascertained that the django security middleware is not the cause as the HSTS options are disabled.
I've tried clearing the browser cache and deleting the domain from the chrome security policies.
nginx config:
upstream django_server {
server app:8001 fail_timeout=0;
}
server {
listen 80;
server_name url.com www.url.com;
client_max_body_size 4G;
charset utf-8;
keepalive_timeout 5;
location /static/ {
root /usr/share/nginx/sdev/;
expires 30d;
}
location / {
proxy_redirect off;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $server_name;
proxy_pass http://django_server;
}
}
}
What am I overlooking?