Linux Kernel is kind of a bad example since its one of the examples of project scaling with many people from many companies. Even if you want to go with its inception, it came from Unix which already had many people. Of course, its also one of the best examples of actual leadership, proper technical people management, which is something very hard to come by. Its also a great example of how to divide your design and make it scalable, so people are working on different parts totally independent on each other.
That's all actual, proper, work, not whatever crappy slide presentation passes as leadership on many places.
For most of them this is just a minor inconvenience compared to the gigantic community they get.
Im sure if reddit keeps this path it will deteriorate and lose users, especially as new generations don't enter it and prefer other platforms, but it still has a very long way to go.
Even twitter, which is full-on scorched earth with big messes like limited viewership, still retains a large active community.