I looked into it, back when anyone could be made mod there was an inside joke on reddit of making Obama and Snopp dogg mods of things. Someone made spez a mod of jailbait and took a screenshot that was reposted around the internet and I forgot about the third party modding thing.

However he defended the place publically, and gave an award called Pimp Daddy to violentacrez, which shows some level of consideration and recognition by the now CEO of reddit.

looking at it with the hindsight of time, the "free speech" defense rings a bit hollow considering the communities they were protecting at the time