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More the fact that there seems to be an effort to handicap racers who are winning too much. It's hardly in the FIA's interest, or in the interest of the commercial rights holders, if Hamilton wins the F1 driver's championship too early. Last race of the season showdown would suit them just fine. Similar to the entirely spurious safety car sessions in NASCAR if someone's too far in front in a race.
Brommers-
Personally I think that's a good thing as long as it doesn't go too far. I mean I'd say that's one of the main drivers for switching up the regs every few years.
Going back to the early 2010s there was a lot of that sort of stuff to try to prevent Red Bull running away (flexi-wings and exhaust-blown diffusers spring to mind). Getting rid of quali modes, personally I see it as a negative thing (having cars/engines that have a disparity between quali/race performance is quite a nice thing for mixing up the racing on Sunday) and do agree with Hamilton et al that it was done to "clip their wings".
Not sure if you're going down the route of suggesting that Hamilton's Monza & Sochi penalties were for the same reason. Monza is a pretty clear error on Mercedes' part. I still don't fully understand the 2 penalties for Sochi but I'm sure Merc would happily be openly critical if the stewards were in the wrong there.
I mean this stuff happened in the Ferrari-Schumacher era with switching up the pit-stop rules and the points scoring system to try to keep them in check so it's nothing new really.
Edit: Had a quick look at the multiple penalties, turns out he did 2 practice starts at the same spot. Makes sense I guess. To be honest the only mystery to me was why Merc said it was fine, or why Hamilton asked if it was okay in the first place.
Edit2: Apparently his engineer thought he meant move down the end of the pitlane (where the red/green light is), not the end of the pit exit. Makes a bit more sense now.
mmccarthy
Not sure if it's what you're referring to, but they've went back on their decision to give Hamilton 2 points on his license and instead fine the team. Thought the original decision was pretty odd considering the clear radio comms with Hamilton asking if it was fine and his engineer saying yes.