However, that wasn't the level of conversation I was trying to have.

There is another viewpoint of http+html that is not the specification. That viewpoint is the usage of http/html/TheWeb.

For example, the White House is building made of stone. It is not a human. So how can newspapers say "the White House has signed the Internet Freedom Act into law." Well, we're not getting anywhere going round and round in circles insisting that stone buildings have no agency to pick up a pen and sign a document and that only a human like President Obama can do it. There are multiple meanings of "White House" and we seem to get along fine with it.

There are also multiple meanings of "web." It's possible for the industry to invent a totally separate word besides "web" for the abuse/reuse of http+html as a transport for apps but that didn't happen. If a startup in Silicon Valley has a goal to release an app that makes use of TCPIP+DNS with the best chance for wide adoption, they can entertain the idea of using a custom UDP+port scheme... or they can just piggyback on http. They didn't use http as Tim Berner-Lee's specified in 1989. It's the out-of-spec usage that's adding new color to what modern "web" means.

I'm not saying I approve of it or it's technically superior. They didn't ask TBL's permission for it to evolve that way. Is it anyone's fault?! Too late to assign blame now. It is what it is. The phenomena I described above exists no matter what label we give it. It would be awesome if another word besides "web" described it but it doesn't exist (yet).

If the "White House" can act as a synonym for "human", it's not impossible for "web" to act as synonym for "whole internet stack." (Again, the synonym mapping is using the other evolving definition of "web" instead of the official RFC specifications.)