Prior to 1.25, I was able to force a player to point in a particular direction by calling SetDirection on the player from the server:

player.SetDirection(vector.Direction(player.GetPosition(), m_center));

Now with 1.25.157961, the player on the client does not change direction until the user moves the character, resulting in a jarring visual change.

I brought this up in the Enfusion Modders Discord server and was instructed by @Jacob_Mango to create a ticket for it:

Jacob_Mango — Today at 1:05 PM
Make a feedback tracker ticket for this please so it doesn't get lost

You are correct though, this is as a result of the changes in 1.25 to player positional synchronization. Before there were no checks in place to see if there was desync, it was always sending a flood of data. Now we have a check in place but it is only against the position of the player and not the orientation.