When we started Cake, investors were nervous about us because Reddit was perceived to be on the rocks. Ellen Pao had just been fired for, among other things, banning 6 subreddits. I thought in the day it might not survive because they had gone too far towards unrestricted free speech, which sounds wonderful until you actually start moderating and find out what people will really post.
Anyway, the membership of the banned subreddits went to Voat, mostly, and I wondered how that would turn out. Reddit was able to raise $300 million after the episode from tier A investors like Sequoia on the basis that advertisers would be more comfortable on Reddit after subreddits like fatpeopleshame and coontown went to Voat.
They got hella traffic in the meantime, though, like Gab and Parler are doing now.