John Oliver is a good sport about it, one, secondly he is a goofy motherfucker, third he has a track record of calling out things for being shitty/bad in ridiculous ways. So, it's totally a John Oliver thing to do, to make all of Reddit about John Oliver because of the API change. It's silly, it calls out the shitty practices, and honestly the whole practice will stick in the minds of people better than just a blackout/complaining. On top of all this, it has the possibility of being brought to his show when the strike is over, which'll further the goal of the protests