How does "Average and p95 latency actually increased after shipping the work to production.
How does an objectively good change make things worse?" relate to Simpson's paradox again?
That's exactly it. After "shipping the work to production" (making it faster for everybody), the overall average and p95 got worse. Each sub-population experienced improvement: countries with fast internet got faster youtube, countries with slow internet got faster youtube. But the overall average and p95 got worse: overall average was slower youtube. Because now more users from the second sub-population bring the overall average speed down (or latency up). That's Simpson's paradox.
Ah, you may be right. It's not clear in the story that "Average and p95 latency actually increased after shipping the work to production." means average of Indonesia and ex-Indonesia and not just Indonesian average.