If I let a bunch of crackheads live in my house and endlessly defended their presence until I was forced by public pressure to reluctantly send them away the shit they got up to in the interim was at least partially my fault in my opinion.

The real crime was how he didn't do anything about it once he knew about it. Same with many other questionable subs, perhaps he enjoyed them or maybe he didn't, but he sure tolerated them being around polluting the waters. They brought in traffic, aka money, and that's all he cares about.

That may be what happened but Reddit management definitely knew about what was going on because they created a special "Pimp Daddy" trophy just for that one mod as a kind of public reward for his work. Reddit was complicit to some degree.

he participated pretty heavily in the sub either way.

Oh wow, that's one of those quirks that in hindsight feels like a major oversight lol

Maybe. On the other hand, Reddit wouldn't be the first major social media platform that got its start focusing on sexualization and sexual harassment if he was...

He still was the mod there... Thats enough to make a fuss about it against him :)

They don't either right now here in Lemmy. But you can only promote users to moderator in Lemmy if they have posted something or commented on something in the same community.