This is the best malicious compliance so far, still reddit could 'force' them to remove the approval restriction.

But subreddits like pics doing the john oliver thing are completely missing the point, reddit dont care if they do that, it's still getting thousands of views and upvotes because its 'cool and funny', its such a 'we did it reddit' moment. Just stop using reddit, let the subreddits go to shit with no moderation, make a sticky linking to alternatives.