Well, SO is now (possibly was?) owned[1] by the same group of companies[2] that failed to secure their own TLDs[3] for purely technical reasons, so, before nefarious intent, please also consider plain incompetence....

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/02/stack-overflow-acquired-by... [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=prosus+multichoice [3] e.g. https://www.icann.org/en/registry-agreements/terminated/mult...