Automatic Semicolon Insertion (ASI) has (sadly) been a part of JavaScript longer than 2016. I’m not sure exactly when it was introduced, but this document from 2009 already contains it: https://web.archive.org/web/20120418215856/https://ecma262-5.com/ELS5_Section_7.htm#Section_7.9

IMO it’s bad practice to rely on ASI since the semicolons may not get inserted where you expected them to. The following snippet

const x = 0
const y = x
[1, 2, 3].forEach(console.log) 

is interpreted as

const x = 0;
const y = x[1, 2, 3].forEach(console.log);

which raises a TypeError.

There are more examples of ASI not doing the right thing on the web, so I don’t agree with “Javascript doesn’t need semicolon”.

Javascript doesn’t need semicolons in the same way it doesn’t need indentation. Great feature for when you’re minifying code, but can easily lead to weird bugs.