I don't consider self-reported nonsense to be empirical confirmation. There can be correlations between different self-reports, that doesn't mean that our idea of why those correlations exist is correct.
The aphantasia theory is clear and parsimoniously makes sense of all this, but your "it's all just semantics" does not, and additionally requires rather other extreme acrobatics with regards to much of the entirety of human experience and discourse. Scholarly research also basically says this.
Your mind is clearly closed and you do not have any serious interest in understanding anything here.
There are correlations to non self-reported phenomena. This comment names a few (despite being dead for some reason?): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49475441