Its hard to abandon a community that you’ve spent years cultivating. No money involved at all, just emotional baggage really.

Valid question. Hate to say this, but if most subs reopen after 2 days, we're essentially handing reddit bosses an easy win. It's like protesting with no terms, and instead merely creating a brief storm that'll pass and quickly be forgotten. Might as well throw eggs at a tank with that thinking.

The only way this protest works, is if subs stay dark with no deadline, and terms that must be met to end the standoff. That's how these things work. That's how it's always worked.

Mostly I think it started as a show of how much reddit relies on the free labor while giving reddit an out, but as time goes on I'm inclined to believe it's also because mods know that if they "abandon" the subreddit, the admins will just open the subreddit up to new moderators a la r/redditrequest

There are already subs that have had users request being put on as mod despite barely becoming inactive.

Power is addictive. At least for some people.