When a block such as stairs are placed, they usually face the way the player is facing, so that is what I expected to happen. However, when I placed the block (spruce wood stairs in question), they were all facing west, (the back of the stairs were on the west side) with a damage value of 0.

-When logs are attempted to be placed in any direction, the game crashes (crash report attached, says something about there being no axis? logs can be placed fine with directional orientation with /setblock however)
-With dispensers and droppers, there seems to be issues as well where they usually face a different direction, but it seems to be server-side as there is some latency. They usually face south.
-Trapdoors, both wood and iron, are also always put on the block south of them, and if there is no such block, then they will break when updated.
-All stairs behave the same way, always with the back to the west.
-Doors sometimes have the same problems as dispensers, but much less frequently.
-Redstone repeaters, comparators, pumpkins, and jack-o-lanterns face the opposite way they should be when placed.
-Buttons, pistons, hoppers, torches, redstone torches, levers, tripwire hooks, furnaces, chests, ladders, and hay bales are unaffected.

This is all likely to "rewrote how block data is handled".