Yea that's my takeaway here. To the point given how u/spez has behaved it wouldn't surprise me if he hired these guys to 'hack' him specifically to smear protests.
/u/spez isn't trying to win a popularity contest, he is trying to maximize his $$$ from the upcoming IPO. Even if it succeeded in smearing protestors, a self-hack isn't going to help him there at all. In fact quite the opposite, since it saddles Reddit investors with more potential liabilities.
I don't necessarily disagree with your logic, but if I was a CEO trying to take a company public I wouldn't loudly and publicly talk about how unprofitable the company was either (on the AMA).