Well that was fast lol
At one point I was federated with Hexbear, then they didn't like what I had to say and defederated me. For some reason, when I pointed that out recently, they silently re-federated with me, which meant I was in a position to talk with some of them again.
Pretty much instantly after the refederation, some of them started going hard in the paint on one of my posts, with an "it's all NATO's fault Ukraine got invaded, why is the US doing so much to prevent the Russians from their noble goal of seeking peace in Ukraine" viewpoint. I disagreed. We got to talking, and this happened:
That wasn't actually a mod. My comments were removed only on Hexbear, nowhere else, which I assume means it was an admin doing stuff in a way where it would look like it was a moderator. Also:
Which means no one could see:
It is actually really remarkable how blinkered a view of reality people can create for their users by doing this kind of thing. I think that's a lot of the reason why there are genuine users on these instances that think the types of things that they do: It's partly groupthink (so many people in a majority agreeing so aggressively with one point of view that it must be true), but partly it is just that anyone who disagrees gets cancelled out before what they're saying can really gain any traction. So it looks like the view is unanimous except for weird occasional outliers who never really back up what they're saying.
Anyway, it looks like I am back to not really hearing anything from the Hexbears again. Oh well.