It's PR. Good intentions. Green washing. Charity. Total BS. Philantropy. Anything you want.
But just because there is reddit in the title doesn't mean it's HN related, come on.
Next time, what? Twitter CTO helped a grandma cross the street?
This is internet culture 2021 in a nutshell.
Who's the "they" referring to in this sentence? We're talking about an online forum where people don't know eachother's names for the most part. It's a community known for reckless spending in the pursuit of humor. I see no reason to believe this is anything other than an action that a particular user took in an effort to be funny catching on and becoming a meme. There's no PR firm planning their actions in a centralized way.
From their own description "Like 4chan found a bloomberg terminal", and many similar actions were well coordinated from 4chan users
Even-though the outcome here looks positive, I don't think it's any good. They could as well have bought gallons of oil and spilled it in the ocean if it had been a good joke for them.
But something that I noticed during the GME craze is how (some) people were making pledges to donate part of the profits to charities if things went well for them, and later showing proof of doing it.
IIRC someone pledged 20% of the profits thinking they'd donate a few 100s, and ended up donating several 10'000s, but staying true to the pledge.
If you dig the subreddit you'll see people donated to foundations for autism and homeless shelters, in addition to local food banks.
It might be another one of the usual internet "mobs", but it's the first one were I see unorganized individuals part of the community pushing others towards doing good, lead by example and show proof for it (although typically with some meme reference in it).
This sibling comment deserves the most attention: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26500831