Incorrect. The reddit UI/app/experience has frequently changed and always for the worse in every iteration. They "revamped" the new web UI just recently before this IPO after the "revamp" earlier maybe 5-6 years ago and is somehow both better and worse. Their app continues to be a crock of bile and the mobile web experience insists that you use it and we no longer have many viable alternatives after they told all the third party developers to suck eggs.
I speculate that the R&D costs are adjacent to their forays into NFTs, TikTok-esque video scrolling which requires a lot of investment into video capabilities, their new AI stuff where they sell all the data to AI companies and so on
I'm convincedthat the mobile web ui changes - bugs included - have been solely intended to drive traffic to the app. Issues like editing comments removing line breaks have been introduced and then subsequently ignored for months.
I speculate that the R&D costs are adjacent to their forays into NFTs, TikTok-esque video scrolling which requires a lot of investment into video capabilities, their new AI stuff where they sell all the data to AI companies and so on