Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet this is the reality we live in. No matter how much talk of "should", the reality stares you implacably in the face. This is a UX problem. Practically speaking, the most important concept is that of cost, which the naive answer covers. The distinction only matters in a language that actually differentiates the two. Otherwise it's little more than trivia, and certainly nothing to get worked up over.
The difference between pass-as-reference and pass-by-reference is more than trivia - if you were ignorant of it in a language, you might find trouble in the future when a function decides to alter its argument values in a way that negatively affects the caller. Part of the reason we should work to clarify the language is to avoid misconceptions about behaviour based on what kind of "reference" is meant.
There isn't much practical difference between using
// void c_func_alters_deref_pfoo(Foo * pfoo)
Foo foo = { ... };
c_func_alters_deref_pfoo(&foo);
// void cpp_func_alters_foo(Foo & foo)
Foo foo = { ... };
cpp_func_alters_foo(foo);