reddit is largely immune to political pressures that other large social media sites must endure for the simple reason that reddit makes shit for money and has no business operations abroad. Facebook and Twitter have to listen to foreign governments because they want to do business in those countries.
That sounds mostly right to me. Barely floating or even running in the red (making shit for money) also provides financial incentives. But beyond the monetary there are plenty of types of leverage - legal, "human", and access to information (in reddit this is probably also not as strong leverage). There's also rewards that can be given to individuals who have some say in the direction of reddit. For example Pao was on the board of National Defense Thinktanks in Washington - an opportunity to both give a small stipend and for conversations to open dialogue and for perception.
