I’m not sure if this is new, but when I clicked on the /r/pics protest post link from the frontpage here, I was redirected to this: https://old.reddit.com/premium
I’m not sure if this is well-known or not that they’re pushing it now, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it, especially on old.reddit.
App icons were a big thing on Apollo. They were however designed by the users and added to the app as a quirky tribute to the community. The difference was that the users were glad to give their money to the dev, because the app you got for free was perfectly usable and awesome.