The simpler explanation, and the one consistent with history, is that reddit does not prioritize the use case of moderators. If the goal was to be an absolutely unmoderated free-for-all, they wouldn't provide half-assed mod functionality, they'd provide zero mod functionality.

Especially given that AutoModerator exists and can be set up to automatically remove posts or comments based on particular key words or even regex, and odes it so fast that not even the various "view removed reddit" services can show you what was there.