This misunderstanding by "normal" users is nothing new, I remember in the late 90s hearing phrases similar to "remember that the web isn't the Internet" all the

This misunderstanding by "normal" users is nothing new, I remember in the late 90s hearing phrases similar to "remember that the web isn't the Internet" all the time. Funnily enough, this is how my mom got introduced to IRC -- she used it for several years in the early 2000's and even flew abroad to meet people she talked to. People will always apply the duck test to their technical experiences: what is the Internet for a 15 year old? Most likely it's something along the lines of the web, and a few mobile applications. As long as "what you use" goes down, the "Internet", for a normal user, is down. Just like there was a point to educating people about it in the late 90s, there's a point in educating people about it now: what you see and use on a daily basis is not "the Internet".