I don't understand how he was not pushed out after he was caught abusing his admin privileges to edit user comments a few years back. Any employee caught doing that would have been let go immediately, yet this guy was allowed to remain as CEO.
This is a different beast entirely, he's betting the farm on this API move and keeps doubling down. The damage that's already been done isn't going to go away, and it's damage to Reddit as a whole, not just Huffman personally.
These are not attributes you want in a CEO. They prevent the building of trust with both employees and users. Both of which you should seek when building a site like Reddit.
The seeds of his character were revealed years ago. Now we're seeing the fruits.