What do you mean when you say that Gnome is the default in Debian? Every time I installed Debian in the last 10+ years, it showed a list of checkboxes with desk

What do you mean when you say that Gnome is the default in Debian? Every time I installed Debian in the last 10+ years, it showed a list of checkboxes with desktop environments to select in the installer. So you can install 0, 1 or more desktop environments during Debian installation. I'm asking, because I see it repeated in a couple places that Gnome is the default, and I feel that I'm missing something.