in the case of lazy imports the big corps were the ones doing the experimentation and iteration. the feature didn't make it into the language "just when big corps wanted them"; the instagram stack you allude to already had its own fork of cpython with lazy imports added years ago, and that is not the design that ended up getting adopted by upstream cpython, though some of the people working on it also collaborated on the PEP that finally did make it in.
If you’re asking whether project leads give more weight to a single, tangible, vocal stakeholder than they do to unknown numbers of anonymous and lightly-engaged stakeholders? Yes.