Reddit, and the early 2000s Internet culture that spawned it had a more absolute view of free speech than the modern consensus. Reddit's rules were pretty much limited to:

• Don't post things that are actually illegal to post
• Don't break Reddit

The introduction of any other sitewide rules was controversial with the userbase at the time, and not because the average user was a creep who wanted to see teenagers in bikinis. People predicted (correctly) that other topics like piracy and darknet markets would eventually end up banned as Reddit tried to become more palatable to advertisers. People remain concerned that pornography will be banned or severely limited.

Its not that he loved the subreddit, his (and by extension reddit corp) sociopathic ass simply views all that stuff as page views

Let's be fair to spez; there's plenty to criticize him for, but he did not work at Reddit between roughly 2008 and 2016 when the jailbait controversy came up.