Since no one answered your question, my understanding is Hexbear was a breeding ground for trolls, abuse, and misinformation. After what I had seen I was all for the defederation.

For me, if there are a bunch of instances, run by individuals, not companies, that have no stake in each other, and they have all defederated from somewhere, there’s probably a good enough reason for me to not go digging for “that one community there”.