I think most people in the comments don't realize that this seems to be a joke hinting at the deep repulsion of 9gag on reddit (as it's accused of stealing reddit's content). The page looks like 9gag but with the content of reddit --> 9reddit.

Therefore I guess design choices were not made on best usability or with the goal of improving the current reddit layout.

That said I probably won't use it in the future, but it's nicely done :)