They needed a project to hype up the service, and fans had presented one to them on a silver platter, complete a with free crowdsourced promotional framework.
These giant companies are using dedicated fans for ideas and strategies, in order to capitalize on virality. That is what rules markketing these days. This is with TLJ is written for the Twitter crowd. Snyder fans went viral so that was a market the parent company could not afford.
It isn't an unheard of thing. The only reason Star Trek is not an also-ran 60's tv show is that fan demand brought them back for a movie, then sequels, and finally whole new series. It happens often in pop media.
It just happens that the media is currently run by rabid activist evangelists for the woke cult, and bashing fans is daily ritual for media activist types. At the heart of that is ultimately professional jealousy. Gatekeepers in a dying industry know they have lost all relevance and people would rather watch Youtube. This jealousy is at the heart of their crusade.
Last I checked J.J. Abram name is on the credits scroll, not Reddit's
Stop embarrassing yourself with this "anti-fan" crusade
Yeah it is pathetic, ignoring of what J.J. Abrams and Chris Terrio have said, entertaining some silly conspiracy theory which makes so sense.
If anything TLJ is the movie most heavily concerned with fan theories. Rian went out of his way to structure his entire movie around confronting specific fan theories. So when J.J. did do this (and which part of ROTS is there to appease fans, exactly?), it was merely following what Rian had done. After all, people wanted him to be influenced by Rian's work, and he certainly was.
At any rate I don't recall fans wanting Rey to be Palpatine's granddaughter. I don't recall them wanting her to discover the power to bring people back from the dead. Was that a huge Reddit fan theory? Were Redditors and Youtubers clamoring for Rey and Ben to make out? It makes zero sense.