Ernest is trying to automate the process of replacing inactive mods. It's unclear to what will happen next after he's done. Keep in mind that other instances are also having this problem too.

For now, just make yourself useful in the relevant magazine(s). I am one of only a couple posting on some mags that map to some of my favorite niche subreddits, but the absentee mods don't have anything to do yet, so they kind of don't matter. If and when bots and/or toxic people actually show up, we can request admin attention then.

There are also other workarounds. The name of a mag doesn't have to match a subreddit or lemmy community, and there's very little inertia in most niche communities. If you promise to be a more engaged mod, just post to the "old" mag and make the case for your new one, and heck, the neglect from the existing squatter mod should mean your announcement stays a top post for some time, LOL.

Isn't it a bit early-days to be trying to take over magazines? XD

Not formally.

You can reach out and ask; but for the time being they're pretty swamped developing platform/software features and tools for kbin, and while it's on the radar and a planned eventual policy change for kbin.social - it's not taken priority at the moment.

lol, i just asked this too: https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/114012/Inactive-Magazine-Owners

Right now, AFAIK, the only way would be to put in a request with @ernest in a pm. Since he is the admin of the instance he can set up new moderation, but he's been working his tail off on developing the platform so it could be a while.

Since this is a early beta software most of those types of tools haven't been made yet.