Fielding was absolutely not saying that his REST was the One True approach. But it DOES mean something
The issue at hand here is that he coined REST and the whole world is using that term for something completely unrelated (eg an http json api).
You could start writing in binary here if you thought that that would be a more appropriate way to communicate, but it wouldn't be English (or any humanly recognizable language) no matter how hard you try to say it is.
If you want to discuss whether hypermedia/rest/hateaos is a better approach for web apps than http json APIs, I'd encourage you to read htmx.org/essays and engage with that community who find it to be an enormous liberation.
I’m only mildly interested in discussing hypothetical hypermedia browsers, for which Roy Fielding’s conception might be well and good (but also fairly incomplete, IMO). What developers care about is how to design HTTP-based APIs for programmatic use.
You don't seem to have even the slightest idea of what you're talking about here. Again, I suggest checking out the htmx essays and their hypermedia.systems book
If you need an http json api for bots to consume, go for it. They are not mutually exclusive.