I think it really boosted the worst kind of engagement. I found a whole spam network there modded by a single egomaniac who spent their whole life creating subreddits, maintaining different personas on the site, crossposting posts between all their alt accounts and subreddits, to external subs they didn't control, etc. People who noticed spammy behavior were silenced and many who spoke out were harassed by them through false reports or just the person calling them slurs in comment threads. Admins recently banned all their main subs and accounts, but they constantly lost individual alt accounts for this behavior. They still operate smaller subs on the site and behave the exact same way.