All the weirdness from Reddit seems to come from historically mixing the CEO role with the Community Manager role. There should be an entire department only dealing with on-site issues and that department should have absolute authority. Reddit grew from a 2 person company where everybody did everything, but did it actually grow up once it got bigger? Reddit has had a valley golden child touch since the beginning, so normal company growth patterns haven't always happened where would you expect in the lifecycle of a company because "lol reddit—we're differunt!"
Having the CEO be at the mercy of users in a multi-million-user fractured community is like having Tim Cook be the top level escalation for Apple tech support. Sure, the users may love it, but it's not sustainable for a company. Give the users an outlet for their rage and moderation problems, but don't touch the toxic waste personally.