Even reddit understood this in its early years. They were gung ho about being pro-community and had some genuinely good staff back then who consistently communicated openly with that community. They had an open source development community and all sorts of shit. This was all built on contribution and trust. If they wanted someone, they didn't do applications they reached out to people personally that they already knew would be good for the roles.

They are trying to mimick reddit today rather than reddit during its early life when it was doing all the right things you needed to do with the early adopter audience.