They really don't. They're likely unpaid fans who thought they could help out deleting some spam and abuse. Suddenly they're forced to choose sides in a game of he said she said with corporate lawyers involved, and any choice they make will cause people to claim they should be taken to task for their bad decision.
I used to be an active moderator of a fairly popular community. At one point, we were requested by a US TLA[0] to remove a post that they believed contained information that should not have been made public. We complied, obviously.
We then got numerous people complaining that we, a bunch of unpaid moderators, didn't try to fight back. I recall one person saying we were "too chicken" to stand up for ourselves against a major US government agency.
If we had stood up for ourselves, the agency would have gone straight to reddit and filed a DMCA (as would be entirely within their right to do in that case), and reddit, inc. would instantly have removed the content (as hosting providers nearly always do, even if there's no grounds for a DMCA takedown[1].) Why are unpaid moderators held to a higher standard than the website itself?
[0]: "three-letter agency"
[1]: yes, this is wrong, but it's how it usually goes when false DMCAs are filed.
I would never face off with a giant corporation over reddit modding. The best case scenario is their threat being total bluster and nothing happens, and even there you have to deal with their loud demands making it purely a negative experience for you.
If the Reddit TOS doesn't absolve mods from this sort of corporate abuse, they should work on that. They can't let outside pressures manipulate their site like that. Not, at least, if they're not getting paid. Then, of course, game on. But...
