I got this comment on another thread that answers my question:
@Gaywallet@beehaw.org
The following people get a report when content is reported:
The community of the reported content
The instance administrator for the community of the reported content
The instance administrator for the person who reported the content
The instance administrator for the person who was reported
This makes my queue a mess at times, especially because federation is not instant and many apps cache content. I’ve had people on Beehaw report content on Beehaw that was already removed hours ago. When someone spams a bunch of content across communities on the fediverse (such as today with a prolific spammer) we can sometimes have dozens of reports for the same user because of all the reports generated above.