Most of us are "trained" not to "bother" our managers so allocating some dedicated time is valuable in my experience.
I'm honestly baffled at the pushback against 1:1s I'm reading. Assuming you have a relatively normal number of direct reports for software engineering (5-10) that adds up to not a lot of hours.
At companies without regular 1:1s, I often had no idea if my manager thought I was doing a good job or not. You can say that this is bad management or bad communication, and you're right but management and communication tend to be rather poor in our industry! 1:1s are more often than not a part of the solution.
Both of which abound, in my experience. If your "boss" is paying you as an "employee", that's still a competitive situation between two businesses: the business of you selling your labour, and your boss, a.k.a. your only customer, who may try to use information warfare to get the best deal.
Basically, I try to engineer 1:1s in my favor if I can - usually only upside opportunity in my case. If I can't, I would probably avoid them.
I think if that kind of transparency at the team was put in place and people got used to it, I think you're right, it kind of aligns the whole team on everyone's goals, and everyone knows where everybody is and who's where in their career with regards to promotion and what not. And who the manager think should be given what opportunity and responsibility next, etc.
In my experience, group discussions favor a very small subset of people, and it has less to do with comfort in social settings and a lot more with domineering personalities.
I had regular 1:1s when I worked for Huawei.
This isn't an "American" thing, that's a very inaccurate generalisation. Maybe more correct to say that 1:1s are useful in cultures where trust needs to be built before saying difficult things. Sure, people from some cultures can just bluntly say difficult things. That's fine. Many people cannot.
At literally every company I've worked in Sweden the managers have sat down with everybody directly under them for a 1:1 twice a year.
Then those longform discussions are summarised and points raised higher up the chain as needed.
1:1s are problematic because they discourage/displace lateral communication between team members and encourage siloing. Everyone has to guess what 'the boss' said to the others, and to figure out which piece of the puzzle they've been entrusted with - classic oppressive divde and conquer strategy. Of course for people who may not be comfortable in social settings, 1:1s may be the only thing they can grapple with properly.