Broken links redirect to the Access Denied page instead of 404

Bug
1

Accessing an incorrect topic URL like https://meta.discourse.org/t/modifying-style-attribute-dynamically-on -topic-list-item/346415/2 (note the space) leads to the following problem:

A web page displaying an access denied message with a yellow circle and a red circle on a blue background. (Captioned by AI)
A web page displaying an access denied message with a yellow circle and a red circle on a blue background. (Captioned by AI)1487×568 27.5 KB

On reload, this happens:

An error message indicates that the page does not exist or is private on a website. (Captioned by AI)
An error message indicates that the page does not exist or is private on a website. (Captioned by AI)1899×624 43.8 KB

The link should directly go to the page shown in the second image, not the page shown in the first.
@merefield and I both noticed this happen on Many pages unindexed by Google. [1]

  1. Don’t worry, that hyperlink isn’t broken :laughing: ↩︎