Imagine if gas stations showed the true price of their gas plus a few cents. You’d be pleasantly surprised when they charged you $1.97/gal instead of $2.00, but your ability to budget precisely would be adversely affected.
For myself, almost all of my connections are not within driving distance, and my schedule is usually unforgiving to overnight delays. I usually budget 2.5 h minimum for transfers, 3.5 minimum if entering the US because passport control has its own very large variance. Haven't had the inconvenience of a missed connection in the last 10 trips.
The fudge factor always existed, it is now the airline's job rather than mine.
They have an incentive to pick a good-enough one, while adjusting it daily/weekly while I tend to fly once every couple of months and that too to a completely new airport most of the time.
If you do the fudging right and leave enough padding, it makes everyone happy - if you pad too much, you lose business as several normally possible connections become impossible by the published schedule.
Indigo did this in India a few years ago and the flights were 30-45 minutes longer on paper (like a 90 minute flight marked as 120), but because of their on-time reputation they got a lot of business customers who take multiple flights a day over other airlines.
It's real easy to run around checking whatever you're tasked with checking and if the results are actually good enter realistic results into a company tablet later when you have a couple minutes of downtime after the plane has left your area of responsibility. You see this sort of behavior in all sort of comparable industries where increased technology has caused spot checking and audits to be replaced with data entry. This would also explain the increase in the times allotted for all sorts of non-flight overhead tasks.