According to the article they were indeed hashes, but they were converted to lowercase _before_ hashing. This effectively makes your password case insensitive

According to the article they were indeed hashes, but they were converted to lowercase _before_ hashing. This effectively makes your password case insensitive and probably reduces the % of support tickets (some people might not just click a reset password link and will insist they were typing it right, so they will open a ticket - all because they forgot capslock). It reduces operating costs at the expense of lower security and somebody must have considered it to be worth it.