I mean, wasn't this discussion started by whether bits per second or bytes per second is deceptive or misleading in order to make people think "woah, bigger number means better internet" ?

Also, how is a division or multiplication by a factor of 8 the difference between what most people do or don't understand? It's a primary school mathematical operation. If people cannot understand that, how are they going to understand that different downloads or uploads inside different applications provide them with different (byte-based) values depending on protocol and server performance of whatever service they are using?

It really is the truest and simplest unit to use that the ISP can reasonably guarantee to you, because on the lowest level, whether using fibre or copper, we send bits and not bytes across the wire.