Lol, I was going to make a post like this, but I'll just hijack yours:
A new policy is that anyone with a moderator or admin position now must have it in the "open". This wasn't always designed for them to be "hidden" mods. If somebody already has a primary membergroup, sometimes just adding them into a moderator group might mean it's there as a secondary membergroup, meaning the badge is not visible.
The loss of positions is not malicious, just a long-needed cleanup.