So what happens if Reddit doesn't comply to their requests?

Last time mods did a protest by making subreddits private, Reddit threatened to kick them out of moderation at that made most mods just shut up and comply.

Now mods have absolutely no leverage against the admins. I don't sympathize with Reddit, but I lost all sympathy for mods too. They should simply do what we all did, and hop off Reddit for once. Sadly, they care more about their "mod powers" than anything else.

It's amazing that the threat to unmod people actually worked, and a lot of subreddits are reopening, saying that "they have no other option". It shows that mods care more about their place in their subreddit than the community they supposedly did their protest for.