I'll take a stab at it. What is the web, really? Gotta be stuff you see and interact with in web browsers right? Sure, you can get to HN, YouTube and Instagram in a browser. But by traffic for example, how much of activity on HN, Instagram and YouTube combined is through a browser? I mean, gotta be pretty low...like 5%? Just a guess, but remember all the app usage and TV usage for those sites is pretty big.
So if 95% of traffic/users/whatever metric are not using a web browser for those activities, is it really the web? It can't be called the web just 'cause they use HTTPS. It's gotta be a 'world wide web' experience, which I think a good proxy for would be using a web browser.
I got no horse in this race, just thinking out loud about it.
“The web” is, by definition, a collection of things that are loosely connected and accessible (searchable, etc). While the current internet is still “a web”, it’s mostly a web of 2-3 massive properties, entirely operated by the same 2-3 companies, completely devoided of public apis (and sometimes even web accessible content). The fact that sometimes they have an html version makes them “websites”, I guess, but not really a “web of nodes” the same way it used to be
Another common phenomenon these days is that lots of businesses don’t even bother having a web presence - it’s all instagram, WhatsApp and tiktok accounts, mostly only accessible via apps (or worse, chat platforms like discord)
So if 95% of traffic/users/whatever metric are not using a web browser for those activities, is it really the web? It can't be called the web just 'cause they use HTTPS. It's gotta be a 'world wide web' experience, which I think a good proxy for would be using a web browser.
I got no horse in this race, just thinking out loud about it.