Wow. I think it says something about how the community has already been altered or manipulated that this wasn't on the front page of the site. The reddit I joined years ago would have gone apoplectic. The new site is such a javascript spaghetti dish it won't even function without JS enabled, and with it enabled all of your keystrokes and mouse movements are collected. It really is frustrating to see the admins post time and again about "transparency" at reddit and then not clearly disclose a change like this to the community. Which, as other posters pointed out, fits the course for the redesign at large and the site's management over the last couple years.

Aside, I think it shows how much the growth of sponsored content on the front page and the death of IAMA has jaded me that when I saw multiple front page posts about "working with the admins" to ban half that Infinity War subreddit I assumed it was advertising related.