As a mod, I don't particularly care if I get paid; in theory, what I do is aiding the community, and the fact that Reddit benefits is just a side-effect.

But when they actively fuck us by overpricing the API, shutting down third party apps, refusing for years to improve moderation tools, spending time & money on traveling around doing showcases and re-designing the UI and making an aggressively bad app, and then start selling our data out from under us... yeah, that's less forgiveable.

A lot of mods had that opinion when the API changes were first announced. But those protests quickly crumbled when Reddit started threatening to remove mods of subs participating in the blackout. It seems like a lot cared more about keeping their mod wrench than anything to do with the user experience.

Our sub had a lot of debate about whether it was an appropriate response or not; we finally relented when it became clear that the protest wasn't doing anything to convince reddit, but only hurting the users. So I don't think it's fair to say that most ended the protest just to hold onto their power.

You can't ask a parasite why its a parasite.