Props are definitely a data you want to display somewhere in your component. If you need to pass it all the way through, you create a whole unnecessary structure inside of another layer.
Like I said in the video, it's direct implication of how Virtual DOM works. Normally you wouldn't do that.
It's really hard to understand any criticisms you mount against React in the beginning of the presentation, other than the DOM is not slow. Would rather have seen this as a blog post instead. I find Imba appealing, but this talk is far from "React is a big mistake, I explain you gently"
You have whole chain of implications showed in presentation which all together makes a big mistake. If you made a small mistake thinking DOM is slow and you build whole technology on top of it making more small mistakes on your way and it affects the way everyone codes now, isn't it a big mistake after all?
No it is not data. We pass props to components, just like you pass variables to print function in C. printf("Hello %var", var)
Too bad people like to name props: {props.data} thus confusing others.