I will hazard a guess. Cerf liked the top-level organization scheme com/org/edu because he worked hard on it and it carries meaningful information about the owner of the domain. E.g. identifies the domain-owner as either a for-profit corp, a non-profit org, or a school. By contrast new tlds like "app" or "website" imply absolutely nothing about the domain or the person/org that owns it. So there's a net loss in meaning. Effectively the domain variability has leaked into the tld.
Originally the hierarchy was supposed to be much more defined. But domains are so cheap nobody bothers. You see it a bit in .gov and .edu where subdomains are actually delegated somewhat sometimes.
"He thought gTLDs were actively harming the Internet."
I might be missing something.