Not really, we aren’t talking about user engagement in fact quite the opposite. The whole point of this comment chain is that SO may go the same route where they sacrifice quality for such engagement to turn a profit. It’s true quality isn’t something that is easy to quantitate but user engagement sure isn’t equal to quality at all. Facebook has ridiculously high user engagement and multiple times (almost 10x) the users that Reddit does and if you try arguing that it is full of quality content you’ll be laughed out of pretty much any room.
Just so we’re clear and to further my point, the website you’re posting on exists because over a decade ago people said that Reddit had dropped significantly in terms of quality of discussion. I’m not the only one saying this you find it here and even on Reddit anytime the subject of quality of content on Reddit is brought up.