Last Week Tonight's host, John Oliver, has unwillingly become the 'face of a protest' in Reddit. Amidst the ongoing protest against Reddit, the site's three significant subreddits, r/pics, r/gifs, and r/aww, have re-opened and bombarded their posts with the Comedian's face and memes. The new development took place after each community asked users to vote, and it turned out well for the subreddits. Well, we will all soon know who wins.

"As many of you are aware, we recently held a poll to decide on the future of the subreddit," wrote the r/gifs moderator, u/IronSentinel," as reported by The Verge. "This initiative was prompted by statements from Reddit's CEO, who suggested that the desires of the platform's everyday users were being eclipsed by those of moderators," added u/IronSentinel in the post. 

Reddit's CEO Steve Huffman has contradicted the moderators who claim that they have resorted to polling, and it has been positive. Huffman on the other hand said, "Not all users are in support." But as part of the ongoing protest, moderators of thousands of subreddits have either restricted their communities or deliberately put them in private mode.

The protests are against the upcoming API changes, compelling beloved third-party apps to shut down. An inflamed post by the r/gifs moderator continued, "We – the so-called 'landed gentry' – appreciate that Reddit is made great by its users. Since neither we nor Reddit would be here without you, it was only fair to let you determine what r/GIFs should include." 

The moderator then shared the poll results, whereby we can conclude that the users voted in favor of Oliver's images as part of the protest. However, the site's CEO Huffman refused to back down, and in an interview on Thursday, June 15, 2023, he said, "It's like a protest in a city that goes on too long, and the rest of the citizens of the city would like to go about their lives."

Huffman was confronted with the fact that most posts were about the protest. But he pointed out that those posts lacked comments. "If there were comments on there, I bet I can tell you what those comments would say. They would say Knock this off; it's annoying." 

The tussle between the subreddit moderators and Huffman has users in the center. But the claims of both are contradictory. The three hugely popular subreddits have massive followings – r/pics with more than 30 million subscribers, r/gifs with more than 21 million subscribers, and r/aww with [more than] 34 million subscribers. Mind blowing! 

These subreddits are now filled with content weaved around the Comedian. Honestly, it's all a mess and won't last long. The top-most post was uploaded on r/pics with Oliver flipping the double bird next to an image of Huffman. The second post, on r/gifs, had a gif of Oliver hitting a table and saying, "Go f**k yourself," with Reddit's logo on the side. 

Despite Huffman's claims, the results of the vote count were in favor of John Oliver's content. It seemed like when Oliver noticed these protest posts, he encouraged the subreddits, and Twitter got its fodder for the next few days. We all hope that this fiasco ends soon and the users and moderators of these protesting communities are at peace with Reddit.