Given all the other things Reddit does, it seems to me this could just be another part of the “ruin the web to push the app” strategy.
At this point, I can't even treat Reddit like a collection of community forums anymore... They make it impossible to read a thread when you come in from a Google result (unless you know the cheat code, change www in the url to old) and their content filtering is something out of a dystopian novel written by a schizophrenic bot. Trying to find any specific piece of info? Good luck.