They’re gonna be left with bottom of the barrel mods. It’s a thankless task to begin with - a marginal proposition at best. Add some threats as a thank you for the unpaid work and it becomes downright abusive Who the hell is going to want to mod in that context?
I have a feeling they won't have a hard time finding deranged weirdos who want to mod and will remove anything that could in any way raise an eyebrow of advertisers/payment processors/etc The worst mods for the community will be the best mods for reddit's bottom line. The power-tripping is payment in itself for those types.
Will it though? Twitter's moderation policies have all but collapsed and the net result is a near-total flight of high-profile high-dollar advertisers.
Like others have mentioned in the thread, the people who will most likely want to take over these subs are going to be some combination of bigots, cranks, and the severely deranged. That doesn't seem like it will do good things for user participation or advertiser attractiveness.
Who wants to advertise on /r/movies if the mod team is exclusively made up of chemtrails connoisseurs and the main topic of discussion is what movies are secret plots by the Jewish cabal?