It may not be the same verb form but the information intake is the same.

Whatever.

Exactly. Not sure how people can even argue this lol

Totally agree. I’m surprised on all the reactions to your post. When reading, one is also learning how to spell or syntax and use punctuation properly. You cannot learn to do that when listening to an audiobook. This is better illustrated while learning languages: I can understand spoken mandarin mostly and have convos but still lack in reading Chinese characters well so I could not read a newspaper or magazine.

What is the difference? You listen to words and process them in your brain, you look at words and process them in your brain, or you can feel bumps and process them in your brain. Why does the input matter?

Same thing

Reading in the literal sense? You’re correct. Reading in the sense many people mean as in “consumed the information” or more plainly, “Hey do you know this story?” Then yes it counts. Just depends on if your definition of reading is literal or more general/practical