I think it's more likely that it's an attempt to steer the conversation away from the usual reaction (which was discussed to death two weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24208958).

The reality is people including on Reddit itself (https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ilxihw/reddit_g...) have a lot of legit complaints about how the website now loads on mobile and is deliberately annoying to force people to download their app.

Nah, Reddit is such a classic and sensational HN topic that we don't even remember that it was a YC company when we moderate these threads. (At least I don't.) Reddit is a planet that used to be a YC company. In some ways HN is one of its moons.