This is something else - just the ego of one rich guy petulantly satisfying his inner demons.
A five-second delay may be enough to cause a measurably increase in the "stickiness" of Twitter if some people wait <5 seconds before clicking or scrolling onwards to something else.
Then they spend more time generating ad-revenue for Twitter than if they had gone off to the New York Times or something and started browsing over there.
I thought it was about increasing short-term revenue.
As that rich guy happens to be the CEO, how is this not the prime example of "prioritising internal politics above what end users want"?