Is there a page somewhere that tells me what netlify is on a technical level? All I see it marketing speak and I can't make sense of it.

Turnkey web hosting. Drag and drop your build folder, get a URL. Or point it to your git repo.

I think you answered your own question. It looks an awful lot like a platform designed to lure non-technical people in with the promise of a magical, frictionless website building experience, ironically achieved by adding layers of abstraction and complexity into a regular web app.

https://docs.netlify.com/platform/what-is-netlify/