A post from r/apple explaining why they were forced to reopen their subreddit after planning to close indefinitely.
Quotes from the r/apple announcement:
Reddit’s asshole CEO u/spez made it clear that Reddit was not backing down on their changes but assured users that apps or tools meant for accessibility will be unharmed along with most moderation tools and bots. While this was great to hear, it still wasn't enough. So along with hundreds of other subreddits including our friends over at r/iPhone, r/iOS, r/AppleWatch, and r/Jailbreak, we decided to stay private indefinitely until Reddit changed course by giving third-party apps a fair price for API access.
Now you must be wondering, “I’m seeing this post, does that mean they budged?” Unfortunately, the answer is no. You are seeing this post because Reddit has threatened to open subreddits regardless of mod action and replace entire teams that otherwise refuse. We want the best for this community and have no choice but to open it back up — or have it opened for us.
NOTE: The URL linked to this post is a web.archive.org archive linked to a Libreddit instance to prevent Reddit from taking down that post from the internet + prevent giving Reddit direct traffic. Other links linked here go straight to Libreddit urls or to news articles. No links here lead directly to Reddit.
Libreddit is a third-party web client hosted by third-party servers.
Link to full post
EDIT: fixed grammar.
So what would happen if the mods refused to moderate and let anybody post anything they want? It's not like they are getting paid and reddit isn't going to pay anybody to moderate.
That's easy - Reddit would simply remove the mods who were refusing to moderate. That's long been against reddit's terms and conditions.
Of course that just brings the conversation right back to how Reddit thinks its subs will cope run by brand new inexperienced moderators.
Reddit would overthrow them.
But I would assume eventually Reddit would run our of mods to replace the mods.
Ideally they moderate enough to not be removed but gradually and subtly use moderation as a way to drive people away.
Even if they did pay someone the quality of moderation will be extremely poor because those people will be surely underpaid, overworked, and won't have any interest in the subreddit's topic.