alt Hacker Newsgiven the timing, it has definitely been done to obscure bot activity, but the side effect of denying the usual suspects the opportunity to comb through ten years of your comments to find a wrongthink they can use to dismiss everything you've just said, regardless of how irrelevant it is, is unironically a good thing. I've seen many instances of their impotent rage about it since it's been implemented, and each time it brings a smile to my face.
The wrongthink issue was always secondary, and generally easy to avoid by not mixing certain topics with your account (don't comment on political threads with your furry porn gooner account, etc). At a certain point, the person calling out a mostly benign profile is the one who will look ridiculous, and if not, the sub is probably not worth participating in anyway.
But recently it seems everything is more overrun than usual with bot activity, and half of the accounts are hidden which isn't helping matters. Utterly useless, and other platforms don't seem any better in this regard.