Perhaps this is the case--jQuery saved them so much time that they've reached a point where they are free to optimize their frontend by removing jQuery.
I know I may be replacing jquery with stimulus or eventually vuejs but writing 5 lines of jquery code for my MVP is exactly the right balance today.
That argument sounds very postmodern. The main issue with perception is that it easily tricked and even more, it can be strongly influenced by bias.
The cumulative effect can surely be measured and reasoned about.
It is very different to program for your new startup idea where adding features faster than your competition is more important than anything else in order to grow your user base, compared to improving an established product already being used by millions of people.
Different needs, different approaches.
I agree that this is an issue, mainly with all kinds of manipulation in politics and product quality/quantity/health impacts but the 5ms vs 2ms execution time of JavaScript is not one of the problems.
I’d focus on humanity gleefully steering itself into a climate collapse and mass ecocide while focusing on all kinds of completely irrelevant bs.
Writing code which just works on multiple browsers results in faster development and easier to maintain code and frees dev cycles to focus on performance.