Error in pre-redisplay-function

[T. V. Raman]

I've observed this intermitently for a few weeks now -- and it
seems to be biting more often; originally it only happened in
emacs/w3 buffers; now it happens eww buffers as well.

Basically you  see this error message firing repeatedly:

redisplay--update-region-highlights: (error "Variable binding
depth exceeds max-specpdl-size") [7 times]

Turning on debugging doesn't reveal any more info.

Evaluating the following:
(setq pre-redisplay-function nil)

fixes the problem.

Q: What is the purpose of that setting, and is there a better fix?