So the mods are reopening because they're being pressured. If the good mods would just... Leave, pick up an alternative. ANY alternative at this point. Lemmy, KBin, Squabbles, Spyke, I don't care. They could've migrated the vast majority of their community over before the API changes hit. But they expected a limited blackout to change spez' mind, and it didn't.

If they left, Reddit would be forced to reopen those subreddits with subpar mod teams. Even if they got great mods, they'd be spread so thin they couldn't possibly keep everything up. The communities would fall to shambles, and eventually even the most stubborn Reddit users would go looking for something else, and they'd find the community they loved in a new home, moderated by the same great teams, and they'd pick that up, too. Reddit would be done.

I think they're falling into a Sunk Cost Fallacy, honestly. They've put so much work into this community, into building this house. They're realizing now they built it on top of a fault line, and now the earth is shaking and its not stopping anytime soon. But they've already put so much work in, that they refuse to call it quits and go build again somewhere safer. It's a shame.

EDIT: I would greatly prefer they migrate to something decentralized and FOSS. Lemmy would be my #1 pick, personally. But pretty much anything would be better than letting Reddit bully them into free labor again.