Actually nobody has ever agreed on the fundamental purpose of Hexbear, and the goal of pipelining libs/dunking is directly in tension with having a cozy hangout space that is welcoming to marginalized comrades
I'm not saying that it should be one or the other, just that the two conflict
I myself remain conflicted about federation, but I feel like it's a worthwhile experiment that has served as free advertising for Hexbear at the very least
That said, federating with SJW was always a bad idea
I do tend to find most of the people complaining about Hexbear on the rest of Lemmy tend to be the same few accounts over and over again, it does seem like a relatively small number of people are actually bothered by Hexbear and are just trying to poison the well against it. There's only so much that their empty accusations can do though, if people actually critically examine Hexbear they will notice a distinct lack of all the things that the whiners complain about. The whiner's goal is to make sure no one looks in the first place and defederating again will just help them out the most.
Of course, I am incredibly biased here, I like having you guys around, it's much more fun than when it was just the Grad.