It is sad that we have 2 generations of people believing that falsehood

HTTP literally runs on the application layer, as do email, IRC , gopher and all the old internet. Nowhere in the word "Application" is it implied that some CEO controls what porn people can view.

The term "app" today implies something controlled by a single company. Whatever the "application layer" might have meant in days of yore, the term now derives from the "app store" and not other earlier usages. That's how language works. (and I'm old to remember those usages in the 90s and they were technical/unusual compared "something the user runs" even back then, jeesh).

maybe that's how programmers, entrepreneurs and VCs call it, but most people i know said an app is a program they run on their phone/computer. I really don't get follow the "controlled by a company" part