If the people in charge now tried to start reddit back then, with all the focus on fairness, equality, correctness, and inclusiveness reddit would never exist.
It would be something else. I'm not sure it would be bigger, smaller, better, or worse, but I know it wouldn't be reddit.
You can't have a bunch of "bros" build a popular site and then pretend that they didn't. You can't bring in a bunch of nerds into a community and then kick them out and take it away from them once it's popular and successful.
Actually you can try and do those things, but it won't work because the tribe will reject you and go somewhere else. It happened to slashdot, it happened to digg, it will happen to reddit and Hacker News too.
If you don't understand the tribe, you can't hope to lead them. You don't lead the tribe by pretending it's not what it is.
Reddit's owners and operators seem to be ashamed by their tribe. That is going to be their downfall.