It's better for getting your point across

I LIKE IT

It's certainly better than hairline fonts rendered in a light gray which still seems to to prevalent. I don't know how that gained any traction. Doesn't anyone like actual legibility anymore?

I think this trend has always been around, like the old newspapers that print giant titles in big, black and bold letters. It's meant to draw attention to what is most important. I noticed that a lot of these redesigned websites also focus on updating the copywriting, so they are putting emphasis on a message that is best delivered in a striking way. It is nice to see copy that is no longer "marketing jargon" but more straight to the point!

Also, we can't forget that a lot of designers tend to copy trends, especially if a well-known company puts it in their GUI...such as Apple. They are all about big, bold titles.

Here's an article about it on mobile: https://medium.com/the-pioneers/complexion-reduction-a-new-trend-in-mobile-design-cef033a0b978

I think the other comments are great, and I'll add, people are trying to go outside the realm of "average" for the web, and most sites still have conservative approaches to type, small fonts, reasonable heading sizes, etc. If your design grabs a little more attention or looks different from the norm, it's eye-catching and, if done well, can look impressive. They're trying to flex the grain of the web just a tad and go outside what feels natural or basic. I'll +1 to liking it, and the little added creativity and attention to type it can bring to a design.

While not all "large bold type" is really brutalist, a lot of the trend is around that idea, which comes from architecture -- basically it's visuals in raw form, emphasizing the nature of the materials and brusque overbearing forms. See more brutalist web sites, a little on the hot trend as it's playing out on the web, and some more in-depth thoughts on why it's happening. Bringing attention to this because I think as this trend stretches out the cutting-edge of design, more average or conservative sites are taking small pieces of the style back to the mainstream, including the bolder weightier type choices.

I think the point of it is establishing better hierarchy. You get big titles for the important things (I don't think Apple does this particularly right because they use them for the name of a tab, which remains the same and doesn't need to be read, but anyway), regular text for the body and lighter/smaller text for less important things like UI elements (no of comments, date of posting, etc.)

I think it's a great idea and it will help place more focus on the content and less on all the crap websites try to create. If you compare all the examples in that Medium article below, you can see how the important content takes centre stage, there's a clearer hierarchy.

https://fngtps.com

No need for articles. It's just regular graphic design becoming more and more able to be accomplished in product design. Just brief overviews of typographic history, along with how type is used for hierarchy will give you a glance at what's repeating itself.

Oops, i started doing it also. It's like a trend. Bold typography isn't used that much, but serif font is now a trend, i see it on almost every website. With bold typography you stand out more from your competitors.

Legibility.