Replacing the entire moderation team of 5000+ subs is not a practical solution and Reddit admins know it
Which is why /u/jailbaitlover I mean /u/spez is sending the message that they would gladly give total power to whatever mod crosses the picket line so they can boot the rest.
If Reddit had to replace all these mods it would be complete chaos and is not much better than the blackout. They will see the same exact problems Twitter has seen since they fired most of their content moderators.
Having bodies is not the same as having dedicated moderators. Moderating a public web forum is a thankless and time consuming task full of frustrations. Putting the wrong people in that position is a recipe for disaster.
Genuinely curious because I have no experience with modding: would it seem okay if a bunch of incapable people who don't know how to moderate a very large sub got in there as mods? How long would it take for things to completely fall apart? (I guess - how long before it wouldn't seem okay?)
This is what has made me think they've likely given an ultimatum to the moderators to re-enable their subs "or else", because they're coming back thick and fast right now.
This will (if they get it right) reduce the number of moderators they will need to replace to get control of the remaining large subs. It would have been better if more mods took a stand. A lot of the larger subs are still private or restricted. So, we'll see what happens I guess.
The problem with replacing a large number of mods is twofold. Finding enough competent (although maybe that's not such a requirement) people to step into their shoes is just one. Another is that there's no real way to hide this. Those people that might not have had a horse in the API race might have one in the "removing my sub's favourite mod" race.