This always deceives me as well. I don't like using gestures for things anyway, so truth be told I'd really like a setting to just disable it, but I agree with you if it is enabled then it should work in both directions.

Swiping left should reveal the community sidebar in my opinion. In the web interface the sidebar is also on the right side and it's the same behavior that various R*ddit clients had. The current way of accessing the sidebar is awkward.

Or at least it's you click back into the post your at the same place in the comments that you were.

There is a PR in works for that and that one allows you to disable it too.

I think I could easily enjoy the gesture, however it's way too easy to trigger. It's like a one centimeter movement on a tablet. E.g. the Android app switcher needs a much bigger movement to trigger app closing.