While I expect this issue to blow over, you are right that defending the CEO's actions by saying he was "frustrated" or it was a prank or whatever else is ridic

While I expect this issue to blow over, you are right that defending the CEO's actions by saying he was "frustrated" or it was a prank or whatever else is ridiculous. Imagine the CEO of Google editing YouTube comments. I don't know if these analogies are totally apt or not, though; it sounds like the CEO here is also a moderator of a forum and may have edit privileges by virtue of that; it's not like he's executing SQL queries to rewrite the comments in place, I assume, he's just abusing "editorial" powers in pretty much the worst way possible (quietly changing content to say the opposite).