Hexbear is a lemmy instance whose website link was put on auction recently, so they weren't able to interact with anyone else until they recently got their website back.
Most instances aren't federated with hexbear for obvious reasons, but some are so that's why you sometimes see them in the comment sections of posts.
According to the auction site (https://www.sav.com/auctions/details/7073489/hexbear.net), they ended up paying 2365 dollars for it.