Right now it's only giving spez a lot of extra traffic from people wanting to be creative and people wanting to see the shit storm. If people keep enjoying literal subs with shit posts, he doesn't care as long as he gets traffic and users before the IPO
I say it's super productive. People go to Reddit because others have already done the work to vote the best content for consumption. For majority of Reddit users who just passively consume info (and maybe vote), seeing John instead of cats will significantly reduce their interest in Reddit.
the few communities I was most active in are not even here, and I haven't missed them. The content is great, but I'm more community driven tbh, and this platform has been more engaging overall. I think that will be a factor in who chooses to stay, and hopefully for the better.
In the short term, people will come by to lollygag. In the long term, there's only so much John Oliver anyone wants to see in a day, so traffic to those subs will likely fall.
It temporarily boosts activity, but that's useless activity. It's not going to help Reddit in the long run, and in fact will diminish Reddit's value if it goes on long enough.
If I wasn't already over reddit, seeing these protests would have honestly probably lead to me check out the other websites. People want to go where the entertainment is.
Seriously, these protest posts are top-tier internet shenanigans. This is the type of internet that I know and love. These types of shenanigans are what drew me to the internet so much in the first place.
My only hope this that this goes hand in hand with deleting posts prior to this. Leaving them up leaves them on Google and people can still interact with them.