Regarding 1: I don't believe the company saying this at all.
My $DayJob has been running Reddit Ads campaigns for the last couple months. Starting Monday we saw a ~60% drop in impressions. They have not come back up yet, they've continued to decline all week.
I can guarantee you that there are reporters who would love to talk to you. You should seriously consider approaching one of those, and I hope that you do so.
Highly unlikely, that would imply that CTRs are going up during a partial user revolt / shutdown. On the other hand, perhaps Reddit could squeeze a little extra ad revenue per click given they control the market prices.
What seems more likely Spez is lying and/or saying this with the subtext that a week of disruption hasn't impacted what their projected quarterly revenue will be, because they'll have time to revise those projections and smooth it all over by the time they IPO. But re-projections never happen in real time, it'll take a few months to see if they're deviating far enough to require a downward projection.
My $DayJob has been running Reddit Ads campaigns for the last couple months. Starting Monday we saw a ~60% drop in impressions. They have not come back up yet, they've continued to decline all week.