You know they made a custom award for the creator of the jailbait sub called “Pimp Daddy,” right? And that for a long time one of the autosuggested results from Google when you googled reddit was the jailbait sub? Do you think a CEO of a “major company” (not what reddit was at the time, they were still desperately drumming up users) is somehow unaware of what shows up when you google their company?

They were aware of it and had been for years before it was shut down, anyone saying otherwise is feeding you PR spin.