Seems to me OP is stating the exact opposite. That the JS ecosystem used to be more egalitarian with a much lower barrier to entry than (ironically) what frameworks like React and Angular provide.
Or perhaps this is one of those things where people assert that the existence of things they don't want to use is somehow offensive. Still isn't a very helpful point to make.
It could be related to the signal-to-noise ratio. If I'm a non-dev looking to throw something together and 98% of the information I find is about some pro-level frameworks, it'll be hard for me to sort through that and find information appropriate to my skill level, level of interest, and needs.
Maybe it's still a net-gain for the world as a whole, but it's certainly a loss for the non-dev. It makes the learning curve (perhaps needlessly, perhaps not) more regressive.