The HSTS preload list (referring primarily to Chrome's, which is also included by other vendors) in particular is something I find really strange. The current domain owner adds the domain to the HSTS preload list. That domain then expires or is released by that owner, without them requesting its removal from the preload list. Then someone else buys the domain without having planned to use SSL/TLS.

The result? Weeks, even months, of not being able to use the domain without encryption, all because someone else previously had the domain added to the HSTS preload list. Removal from the preload list is by request only; there is no automation in place to detect the lack of an HSTS header to mean that the domain is no longer to be considered a participant. Even worse, the request to be removed can take an indeterminate amount of time to be disseminated to end users of the browser. The preload list is not pushed to clients via something like a daily digest; the list is hardcoded into releases of the browser. This means it can take an absurd length of time to see a domain removed from the list, as it depends on every individual user updating the browser to the latest version, and only once the vendor even gets around to updating the hardcoded list in a given release to include your domain's removal.

How such a mechanism was ever acceptable is beyond me. Domain ownership is technically fluid, and yet the implementation was designed in such a way as to assume that domain ownership never changes.

That makes little sense. Far more likely they just didn't take into account the fact that not every domain is a long-term "google.com" owned by a single entity for its lifetime.