I always thought Wired had a great design. This is a giant leap backwards. Why do the share buttons need to take space from the actual content?
It has become a rule of thumb that ~680px is the sweet spot for text column widths, since it makes it easier to read. I'm not sure how much actual research that has gone into text column widths, but I know there has been some.
Sadly, it seems like the new Wired article pages have the body type at a character width of around 50 on average, so it falls just a hair short of that ideal window. Removing the social share icons would likely bring it into that window, ironically.
As someone who's working on a major replatforming for another news media site, I feel Wired's pain on this.