This is completely ridiculous:
I was going to say that someone at the Times must have decided that they only need to appeal to people browsing the site via their phones.
Then I realized that this design is probably intended to make going to their web page in a browser (where ads and data-collection can be blocked) as miserable an experience as possible in the hope that I will be more likely to finally give in to their incessant pop-up nags to use their app instead.
Oh, the experience is so much better in the app you say, NYT? No shit—because you keep deliberately degrading the web experience.