I don’t feel like Navalny had much say in the matter.

Robin Williams did. I’m sure other people do as well.

Not necessarily. Size of time unit doesn’t explicitly mean largest to smallest. For human comprehension day first makes sense because that’s the most significant piece of data usually. Likewise for time of day the hour is the most significant piece of data.

Though for computer comprehension, absolutely yyyy/mm/dd is best hands down.

It’s not about saying it. It has to do with ordering it by size of time unit. Like I don’t write the time as 43:12:19 to denote 43 minutes and 19 seconds past midday do I.