Regardless of your stance on the issues, the fact is that this update is seen pretty widely as being negative. The "Developers" that so many here and in core appear to despise are using their influence to recommend that the novices disable auto updates. I am seeing more and more posts on blogs and in social media with links to plugins or code or instructions to disable auto-update. And widespread public opinion postings that WordPress (the people/organization) can not be trusted. The end result is a rash of negativity for WordPress (the community) and probably a net loss of thousands (or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands) of WordPress web sites that auto-update.

As I see it the issue at hand is about trust. The number of devs and noobs that distrust the WordPress establishment is growing. It's not meteoric and it's not going to cause most people to stop using WordPress, but for all we know, this is the "beginning" of the end unless something is done to address it. And from where I stand, the WordPress establishment does not wish to address it or even acknowledge it. They just want compliance without question, and that only makes it worse. And they're blind even to that.

I just hope that someone at Automattic or in the upper eschalons of WordPress Core will wake up and see what's really happening. And stop feeding the beast that is making the whole community more and more divisive.