Except for being a climate change activist he is a pretty bland public figure. It's not like he's Ann Coulter or Michael Moore.
He never claimed to have invented the internet.
He did claim to have taken the initiative in creating it in the context of a broader claim about taking the initiative to advance various important economic, environmental, and educational advances through policy and legislation.
I've seen people still don't like what he said even after knowing it was not literal. Some people just don't want to see the internet as something not only invented by the government, but was not the total wild west they romanticized it as.