I'm always between 2 perspectives, one side says to just make their wish come true and allows them to bring paid workers to do the mod work. But then comes the other one that says, there is always someone to want that 15 minutes of glory/power or whatever and will do all the stuff for free.
In either case I think it's not an easy job, and any side will affect Reddit, at least in the short time, people tends to go with the flow, and unless big "old" players (As Sync, Boost, Apollo) or "new" players ( Jerboa, Connect, Memmy) makes other alternatives as easy as it was Reddit, they will stay there.
For instance for me, not been in a centralized server raise questions like where to check in in a community like Aww, Pics, Comics, why there is world, ml or XYZ instances, what's going on ... So, for non tech people all of this will be as intimidating as it was for me, I think.
I haven't read someone answering why now is so common. I'm not a product designer or something similar, but our brain evolved to process the visual inputs over other senses. If a product have integrated lights, most of the customers will prefer them instead of products without lights.
So basically is just a sale point, and as many here already told, many of them are unnecessary.