I can’t say what final straw is driving this exodus of moderators. But lemmy.ml has had a consistent problem with admins repeatedly banning users who post anything political that does not align with their questionable “communist” interests, and supporting mods that further those interests.
I should know, after all they used obscure, unexplained “rule 1/2” violations to 14-day ban me about 4 separate times on my old instance for comments that I thought were fairly benign and civil, but did conveniently take an antiChina or antiRussia stance. (Check the modlog on lemmy.ml directly for empireOfLove@lemmy.one)
Just overall, it’s run poorly and is falling into the same huge moderator powertrip that ruined Reddit. People should not be using it as a serious instance if possible.
You might even see this comment get removed and this account banned as well. That alone will tell you all you need to know about how .ml is run.