That’s a meaningless comment, since linguistics as a science is empirical and objective. If some aspect of language is in common use, linguistics may interest itself in this empirical fact, but not in passing judgment on it. Science doesn’t have “sides” – it observes and reports. And no one denies that this usage of “literally” is quite widespread.
Whether one might personally regard such usage as stupid and regressive is a different matter. Linguists can be mercilessly critical of poor language usage in isolated instances, but as a group they tend to be diehard descriptivists and readily accepting of common usage as a fait accompli and even admiring of colloquialisms and dialects no matter how far removed from the norms of the mainstream language. I think it’s a little bit like studying some strange two-headed mutant fish – it’s scientifically interesting, the word “wrong” just doesn’t apply, but you definitely wouldn’t want to be one!