There is really no excuse for what he did and most other businesses would have fired him immediately. Reddit simply has a very immature corporate culture. Post-IPO (if they get that far) I would expect a massive clean-out.
For comparison, I don't expect that a Google employee, or C-level executive, has an "Edit" button next to every single post on Google Groups.
Being able to silently change the content appearing under a user's name is a big deal. It's a more significant capability than being able to e.g. take down content.
That’s worse though, right? Why does he have this special functionality the other admins don’t have? Why would the CEO ever legitimately need to personally edit a reddit comment? Surely he has many better things to do.
And there are many very legitimate reasons to have the capability to modify entries in a database, but honestly even if there weren't, making a system where it's impossible for anyone other than the originating user to modify an entry is a challenging task.
He wrote the site's first version, and co-wrote the (modern) Python version. Lots of things stay in place in legacy systems.
That sounds exactly like what a Donald Trump meme subreddit would say.
https://bgr.com/2018/03/12/reddit-election-interference-stev...
The clear harm is that Reddit posts have been used in court cases. People have and will go to jail based on that content.
The unclear harm is they use “we’re being professional business” as an excuse to do unpopular and unfriendly things and also “it’s just a prank bro” when stealth editing posts... no dude. Can’t have it both ways. No one should trust this company at all, and they’re proving why.