I reckon it’s more that they need to be ‘seen’ to be doing something about it, but will nonetheless take the engagement as long as it doesn’t cause a stir. I mean they had jailbait and watchpeopledie as large subreddits for ages… until they started getting flack for it.
It still drives engagement. Same for the subs that have been flooded with AI stories and bot responses. It can be marketed as engagement to advertisers.
Yeah same in Australia for me. Fwiw it’s also a way to rid yourself of some of the forever chemicals lurking in your body, eg pfas. They worked it out testing firefighters* blood and the regular blood donors had less of the chemicals in their system.
*firefighters get excess exposure to the chemicals as they’re common in firefighting foam.
Fuck reddit.