I think for two simply have different use cases for Reddit.

The old ui is great if you see Reddit as a text aggregator. You want text or headlines and click on the content to see it. Images are almost meaningless.

The new ui puts a focus on visual connect. Images and videos are the focus, you don’t have to follow links most of the time, because the content is embedded.

Those are two very different approaches. Neither is doing a great job of achieving their goals, though.