Interesting Reddit is not just threatening moderators.

They actually replaced a very few mods in a very few privated subs.

The other threat they made was to replace mods in subs that switched to NSFW, which they also did to a very few mods in a very few subs.

The defining characteristic here is that they did it to a very few.

It's simply a tactic to scare moderators into falling in line.

While mainly showing Reddit knows full well they can't materialize these threats on any real scale.