this occurs because one of the suggested IDs is for a threatened, globally obscured taxon: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/iconic-taxa-cut-off-on-project-stats-page/9632. this is not new functionality. if you’re interested in more about this, it might be best to start a separate thread or search for existing threads on the topic.
i’m not sure it’s a good idea to delve into great detail about every one of these changes in this kind of forum. it’s already been established that the change is intentional, and that staff is open to adding back the number of observations without the link. so hopefully that’s enough.
obscuring the date/time adds an additional layer to protect obscured locations, and it lays the groundwork for additional layers of location protection in the future.
this forum is probably not the best place to talk about perceived benefits or lack thereof because it’s natural for curious people to want to steer that kind of conversation further and further down the path of providing great detail about the problems that are being addressed, and that’s probably not a great place to end up.
staff will already have a good idea of the pros of the changes, but they may not fully understand all the cons of the changes because it’s impossible for them to understand how everyone uses the system. so if you really want to change minds, it’ll probably be more effective to steer away from perceived benefits of changes, and talk more about the cons by detailing exactly how these changes hurt your particular workflow or processes.