> the only thing he secretly altered was the target of the insults
Basically irrelevant. One hell of a veil to pierce.
This isn't even the first time reddit's indicated they're kind of... flexible, let's say, with how they handle certain kinds of data; but it always seemed like they stopped just short of crossing lines.
Unmarked edits to user comments was absolutely not something I'd've expected to come of that, so I can't say I'm not surprised; still, this seems like it's just the next stage of something that's always seemed to exist (or not exist, I suppose) for them.