Networking frustration on linux

Hey, this probably is not the 100% correct subreddit for this question, but I can't find help anywhere.

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I am running manjaro. I am trying to redirect example.com and https://example.com in my /etc/hosts file.

i have it setup like this:

0.0.0.0 example.com 0.0.0.0 www.example.com 0.0.0.0 https://example.com 0.0.0.0 https://www.example.com 

pretty sure last two entries do nothing but i am desperate.

Whenever i ping any of these sites i get correct results it is

64 bytes from localhost (127.0.0.1)... 

on both http and https requests. But whenever i open a web browser - tried Firefox, Brave even elinks it just goes connection refused. I've been battling with this for two days now. It is just absurd how I can't get this to work. I need this for a local website development