The main thing I am critical of are the chat reports, but that was essentially Microsoft’s doing.
Back when the likes of 1.9 and 1.11 came out, they added things people they wanted (elytra, firework boosting) but ended up screwing over how the whole game worked. So I can see why they’re being careful with harmless small changes. It’s also a 16 year old game, the fact that they’re pushing free updates for a one off £20 purchase is excellent. The game is also already pretty good as it is. The mob vote was a nice idea for community engagement(although they could have been more clearer on how the losers would be added later on). I think people are FAR too toxic that they aren’t receiving free updates for a £20 game that is already absolutely stellar, and that many have poured thousands of hours in already, if not tens of thousands. I’ve been playing it for over a decade now, and I am quite happy with the direction it is going. People are ungrateful that they aren’t getting huge game changing updates every year. Things like that need to be well balanced and ironed out to prevent a disaster like 1.11 happening again.
People running private servers can be all sorts of groups, however Mojang wanted everyone to behave to their rules, which didn’t fit for some servers (like 2b2t). Mojang’s rule enforcement has never been consistent, and people were afraid to get banned over minor nonsense.
How it ended up is that people didn’t want it started using “No Chat Reports” mod alongside their mods, which blocks the way Mojang verifies message authenticity for them so no report could be considered legit.
Servers can force this verification to work to send messages, or not require it. They can also use this mod on their servers to break the authenticity mechanism for all players on that server. Most servers will have it disabled; but the biggest ones keep it to hold their public images safe to parents.