There was a post the other day about a "powermod" from reddit who was doing the same thing with lemmy communities - snatching up dozens of names and squatting on them. Folks are rightly asking for restrictions on the number of communities any one person can mod, along with other safeguards to prevent power-tripping.
Is there any incentive other than showing who's boss on the internet? I struggle to see how the amount of time and energy involved in moderating just one community, let alone multiple ones, are worth it just to get a power high. It seems exhausting.
It's an influence game like anything else online now that the Internet is commoditized. Corporations and political influence campaigns can and do pay for control of high-traffic accounts and communities to nudge discussions to benefit whatever they're selling.
I know a lot of the parenting subs would ban you if you commented in r/childfree. Albeit, childfree is a toxic sub and a lot of the people there would subscribe to parenting subs just to troll them.