Come on, it's not literally the same. It at least requires an active attacker to read your data, whereas HTTP can be read passively.
You're right. It's not literally the same. However, it is effectively identical.
It is absolutely trivial for even a 5 year old to click a button and perform a downgrade attack on this type of an https:// connection. That is why accepting any self-signed certificates should be treated identically to http:// connections.
If you pre-share or pin self-signed certs that can be useful but in a different use case.