I think who financially owns a company is largely irrelevant, whether they’re saints or pedophiles. In this case, reducing the discussion to “immoral billionaires” or mythical dragons hoarding wealth misses the point entirely.

Reddit is a publicly traded social media and news aggregation platform with ownership spread across institutional investors, including a major publishing conglomerate and a large Chinese technology company. The possibility that some wealthy individuals connected to those organizations may be immoral is, to me, one of the least interesting aspects of the discussion. There are far more substantive issues surrounding Reddit’s ownership, governance, moderation policies, business incentives, and corporate structure than the personal character of people at the very top.

For example, if someone is banned after criticizing a public figure, what is the more plausible explanation? That Reddit is deliberately protecting a specific pedophile because of who they are, or that moderators or administrators are enforcing a political or ideological preference? The latter strikes me as vastly more likely. If you’re trying to explain why moderation decisions happen, political bias or inconsistent enforcement is a much more convincing explanation than a coordinated effort to shield particular criminals.

Focusing on whether a billionaire somewhere in the ownership chain is a bad person is like criticizing cars because they produce CO₂. It’s true, but it’s so obvious and commonplace that it contributes very little to understanding the actual issue.