And yet I read something about them taking over one of the popular subs (adviceanimals or something) and removing all the mods and making it public again...
What happened was the top mod, who had been inactive for a while, came online and overrode the other mod's decision to stay open. This caused a moderator dispute, which caused the admins to step in, and they decided to remove the top mod and reopen the sub.
The mods knew this was a risk going in. If anything, it just shows that reddit doesn't care about its users. They're ostracizing a large portion of their mods. If there is no one to moderate their site, they're going to realize why they needed their users very quickly.
Think it would have been a more effective protest if mods got together (think it was 24k from all the blackout subs?) and said they would remove themselves as moderators if reddit didn't budge. Reddit would in no way function if that amount of mods stopped moderating
Yeah there would be gore or CP everywhere very quickly ESPECIALLY if the users valued the increase in chaos. People would probably be actively posting full length Disney movies and "questionable" porn to stir shit up.