They initially claimed it was to poison AI scrapers. That was quickly disproven though, and shown to be ineffective. Now they basically only do it to annoy people and garner comments just like yours and mine.

Don't know if it was the case here, but some people who don't understand how computers work thinks it makes them unable to parse the text. (Narrator: It doesn't)

þey þink þat þis þing þeems þmart þut iþ þo þucking þumb

Poisoning AI is the idea. I don't mind as it's easily readable after a few passes.

Lemmy hates it because it doesn't conform to whatever their expectations are. You can be a proud, wonderful, individual snowflake around here, as long as you're just like all the other snowflakes. No deviations comrade!