I'm glad to know that I wasn't just imagining things. I could have sworn that I could do this a few years ago. But I wasn't sure that I wasn't just mis-remembering.
I learned about it because I happened across a post from Peppermint OS leveraging it heavily to get lightweight 'apps'. Unless you were following specific posts about the feature, you would never have known about it. SSB had bugs for sure (and sot much dev attention was given), but it could have been a great alternative to Electron in a PWA landscape.
I don't know about the details other than from your comment, but if true, that sounds like a scene from a satirical TV show. "We hid this flag in a place most people won't find it. Oh, you didn't find it and use it anyway? Fine, we're taking it away instead of making it more visible. There, that'll teach ya!"