Grain of salt: the Hexbear admins fail to mention any “DM harassment of trans women” (from 196 or blahaj) in their defederation announcement, which seems like a huge detail to leave out if you’re defederating over alleged transphobia.

Most defederation announcements don’t usually assign a cause, a user usually requests it in a thread and then the admins bring it to a vote if it gets enough attention. I personally voted to stay with blahaj but with the addendum that we ban all regular 196 posters and mods. If you search around you can see a handful of people posting personal experiences with harassment from 196 here. Its been a long time but I recall getting sexually harassed as well, though that user did eventually get banned here much later.

Out of the hundred or so very active trans commenters, only 5 voted to stay federated with blahaj, me included. Though some trans people were very hurt by this, so ultimately I was fine with defed, I voted to stay federated mostly for trans unity reasons.