OK, i understand you dislike it. But by any reasonable standard the web is a client/server distributed system, where the browsers are the clients. I understand you don't feel like that's right, but objectively that's what is going on. The browser is interfacing with the remote server, via an API discovered in the hypertext responses, based on actions taken by the users. It is no different than, for example, a MMORPG connecting to an API based on user actions in the game except that the actions are discovered in the hypertext responses. That's the crux of the uniform interface of REST.

I don't know what "for its own benefit" means.