Somewhat happened a few days ago. Reddit in the browser (ie. M.reddit.com) got a redesign which has screwed loads of stuff up (can't even see usernames of those who have submitted posts on /hot) which makes everything cartoonish, moved the "share" buttons to where voting used to be, and is overall just a bit crappy - without mentioning some of the bugs they have such as a giant white bar on every page.

It sucks because I love reddit, but it will be EOL for the people who made it what it is in about 3-5 years

By then hopefully reddit alternatives like Lemmy[1] become viable

1 - https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy

Yep not looking forward to this day.

They must have usage stats.

I think they are well aware that a lot of older users (some likely heavy _content_contributors_) will simple walk away if they do this.

You can't sell ads if you don't have original content that drives traffic to your pages.... old.reddit.com as well as '.compact' are the price to pay to prevent a digg type exodus.