“We’ve known for over a decade that people come to Reddit to talk about the products they love – take r/BuyItForLife for example, a community of over 1.5 million redditors who have been sharing recommendations and advice about their lifelong, must-have purchases since 2011. These updates will uplevel the search-and-discover experience for both brands and our users by tapping into our differentiated value as a hub for actionable conversation”
The signup delay is very confusing, I agree. To make matters worse, in some instances there’s no indication that your request even gets through, so the instructions basically say to try again, even if you’ve already lost your username.