I assume OP didn't mean that a single overarching ideology was driving all if these changes, but rather that each of them individually is ideologically driven (and therefore immune to questioning). They all seem to be directly counter to the end-user's desires but are off-limits to redesign.

Pretty much what I had intended by that comment, yeah.

YouTube know that the choices they've made are qualitatively bad because users overwhelmingly complained about them (dislike button being the most obvious example of that)

...but quantitatively numbers didn't go down enough to force any kind of retraction or even recognition of discontent, so now we're stuck with the results.

This is just what happens when groups of people work together.