For most everyday things, the internet works fine. Web4 is not built on pretending otherwise.
The question it asks is different: who owns the layers underneath?
Here is the pattern. Web1 let you read. Web2 let you write — and in the same motion, platforms took the identity, the relationships and the data. Web3 gave ownership back, but only in one narrow strip of the stack: tokens and wallets.
That is the flaw Web4 targets. A person holding their own crypto wallet was still reachable only through a carrier's subscriber ID, still resolvable only through the traditional naming hierarchy, still hosted on someone else's cloud, and still recognizable only through a platform-issued profile. Sovereign coins riding on rented rails.
The Ownership Thesis follows from that. Every layer of the internet should trace back to something a person directly controls. If you cannot disconnect or revoke it yourself, you do not own it — you rent it.
Ownership cannot be a patch applied to one layer. Sovereignty leaks out through the layers you left untouched. That is why Web4 covers all seven rather than improving one.
What that looks like in practice: an identity that is yours instead of an account issued to you, a community you operate instead of a room inside someone else's platform, and an architecture published openly so it can be examined rather than taken on trust.
You do not have to choose sides. Use the conventional internet where it serves you. Use Web4 where ownership matters.