This essentially just opens the link once clicked, rather than showing it in the feed? So is almost the same as a browser opening and showing the content.

I feel like it's important to reduce friction for things like this, for both the user and the creators, as well as making the feed look better as you scroll, so you can see GIFs as they are posted rather than links.

Sync for Reddit was fantastic so I have faith that we will see similar features, even if not available on launch.