It may mean something, but Roy Fielding went out of his way, over many years, to not talk about the actual use cases he had in mind. It would have been easy for him to clarify that he was only talking about interactive browser applications. But he didn’t. And the people who came up with HATEOAS didn’t think he was. Nor did any of the blog articles that are espousing the alleged virtues of RESTfulness. So it’s not surprising that the term “REST” was appropriated for something else. In any case, it’s much too late to change that, it’s water down the bridge.

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.