TL;DR To make messaging on Reddit faster and more reliable, we’re replacing Private Messages (PMs) with Reddit Chat and inbox notifications. This transition is necessary to maintain and improve Reddit’s messaging infrastructure. We aim to make these changes with minimal disruption while improving the user experience.
Timeline: Starting at the end of March, we’ll roll out these changes in phases over the next three months to ensure everything goes smoothly
My sides went into orbit. They aren’t even trying to come up with believable lies any more, right?
…I think that the reason is twofold: 1) it’s easier to plug advertisement into the new chat system, and 2) chat only works in new.reddit so they can use it as an excuse to deprecate yet another old.reddit system.