In their mind their worried about the stakes of losing complete control of their haven on reddit and watching a community they built in their free time, start blindly following some puppets appointed by reddit. Reddit will always have that power but so long as the mod sees a possibility of maintaining control Reddit can cowtow them under the guise of "You're the best mod we have, we want you in control, we just need you to accept this is the reality."

As long as you only use on a browser with adblock, and don't actively support their changes, it isn't letting them win. Spez is trying to built a wall around his garden of extremely useful information, go nab some tomatoes while they're not yet rotten.