It's the counting down part I consider to be rude and demeaning. In addition to that I feel like it encourages people to cram as much as they can into as little

It's the counting down part I consider to be rude and demeaning. In addition to that I feel like it encourages people to cram as much as they can into as little time as possible, which kind of defeats the purpose. The goal of time boxing in my opinion is to be a signal that you're doing something wrong. Realistically, you shouldn't ever hit the limit. The cutting off of individuals vs teams is something we could debate, and I'm not sure either of us would be right or wrong on. I see your point of strong vs soft spoken personalities, it's not something my team personally deals with so thats probably part of the reason more free form meetings work for us.