looks like rendering adblockers extensions obsolete with manifest-v3 was not enough so now they try to implement DRM into the browser giving the ability to any website to refuse traffic to you if you don't run a complaint browser ( cough...firefox )
here is an article in hacker news since i'm sure they can explain this to you better than i.
and also some github docs
Because Reddit does it? 🤷♀️
Nah its part of the markdown specification
That's actually a bit of a relief to learn. I didn't want to believe it was simply because Lemmy was trying to copy Reddit, but I just didn't know enough to see any other reason.