alt Hacker NewsI did that because people complained that the links were too visible (because the site is actually a Wiki, there are often several copies of the same link throughout the text).
Over the past 20 years there have been many schools of thought about it, and the only way I could get people to stop kvetching about it was to have the links become more distinct on paragraph hover but still render them in a distinct color (and oddly enough, the rate of complaints went way down when I shifted to dark red).
I have no sane explanation for this other than ascribing it to user-driven UX research over a massive amount of time (when compared to most other websites I know).
But (fun fact) the duplicate links inside paragraphs do wonders for RAG chunking and vectorization. :)
Ha, did you just update the styles based on my complaints? :)
I believe there are multiple reasons why the styles are better now. Even the first-use red links are much more accessible now. And you are now presenting the same content to the users using screen readers or other assistive technologies as for the typical users.
By the way, I think your analysis of the Apple situation sounds absolutely spot on.