[chongli]

Reddit has a long track record of incompetence. The site has historically been very unstable and their attempts to replace the front-end UX for both the browser and mobile apps have been widely panned. Therefore, it's reasonable to suspect that they be making a mistake with this decision as well, despite having access to all of the relevant data.

[garbagecoder]

Put another way, Reddit began enshitiffication no later than the "new" style and since it's intentional, it's only a mistake in the medium and long term, as has been noted they're trying to squeeze a few bucks out of its hulk before it dies.