All this is doing is driving up engagement for reddit. If you wanna protest then just stay off reddit. This isn't to say I don't enjoy seeing this, cause it is hilarious, but it's still giving them what they want, engagement.
I don't necessarily agree, if one persons short term engagement results in five people's long term disengagements then it's a net gain and a good investment!
It doesn't hurt to use these opportunities to remind people of the reasons to abandon Reddit (and of course of all the various alternatives that exist).