Without it being said, we knew such things are happening. There are a few 100s of only mobile devs in Uber, while Uber app hasn't really changed in years, and these devs aren't creating any user-facing values. Running it must be difficult and a company need a lot of people for it, but there must be some point at which a company stops "disrupting" and just starts optimising and micro-optimising. This is what OP is talking about it, they are micro-optimising budget. There are 100s of them employed, so they must be doing something!
Consider that 300 mobile devs produce close to 1 year of man-hours every day. This is enough time to complete your TODO list of app you always wanted to do. They spend it producing values for shareholders, not you.
Now consider how many devs and experiments like these are done every day on facebook, instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and gmail.