Web development, unless you’re doing something novel, is not software engineering. Getting some hodge-poge of react drivel to work is not engineering no more than configuring a router is software engineering.
Choose your words with more precision.
But I wouldn’t call myself an engineer for swapping a wheel on my car.
But I would call myself an engineer if I were responsible for a small business making car wheels, even if we were not doing any R&D.
Truth is almost none of us are "engineers". (meaning a very strict discipline, often with licensing, and with very real consequences for failure after you sign off on something) I'm fine with that, but I'm also fine with the colloquialism of "software engineer" (same way I'm ok with "crypto" meaning "cryptocurrency" if we all have an understood context)
However, I usually interpret comments like this to suggest things like the backend is "real software engineering", which while being literally incorrect, it's also a very narrow view of our craft. I think the pushback is similar to the traditional ops folks pushing back against "devops" or the way people make the same, predictably pedantic comments about any "serverless" article: it represents an encroaching on their expertise.