I don't think I really need to explain much, their admins are transphobic. 
https://hexbear.net/post/1587342
Snowe, an admin, complained about a transgender person being offended over being misgendered. Ategon made an apology post but keeps snowe on, no public apologies from snowe to the transgender people affected.
Textbook 
note: conversation about Ategon's use of the word triggered edited out, might be misunderstanding, need clarified
i think it's reasonable to accept @[email protected]'s apology here. they seem to be operating in good faith, despite their...let's call it potentially incautious word choices. that said, two(ish) things:
firstly, while i don't care if people insult me on a personal level (most of you are well aware civility is not high on my list of concerns), the attitude towards trans people's concerns in the linked thread is not encouraging. calling me an idiot is fine, i'll cop to that and gladly so. but letting blatantly false accusations like "hexbear people aren't even trans! actually they're transphobic" stand is flatly not. as well, the cries of "i can't believe blahaj is defeding us over such inconsequential matters!" don't speak well of some of the users over on .dev.
secondly, some of our users (like you and cromalin but emphatically not me!) spent a lot of effort trying to educate snowe, only to get back a load of arrogant horseshit. rather than apologizing to any of the people actually involved, snowe chose to...apologize to the admin of a completely unrelated instance? to make myself perfectly clear: i don't necessarily feel entitled to any sort of apology, but i do think if apologies are going to be handed out then a) snowe should be the one doing the apology tour and b) it should be towards our users, since they were the ones actually involved (as ategon acknowledged here). as far as my personal involvement in the matter, i'd just want snowe to stop and listen to trans people when a bunch of us are all saying the same thing. i understand my attitude towards them set an antagonistic tone but stubbornly digging in your heels when marginalized people are trying to explain something they know more about than you do is Not Good. since snowe seems to view themselves as being an "ally" i hope this is something they internalize sooner rather than later.
i'd also like to genuinely apologize to the folks here for sparking off such a firestorm. i can't help but feel this could have been at least partially avoided if i had maybe chosen to pump the brakes a little bit and been less aggressive out of the gate. it's...something i'm working on.
(sorry too if any of this is unclear or rambling, it's 4 am and i'm the living dead)
To your first point: I'm glad it wasn't just me. reading through that thread was mildly upsetting. Just more "damn those sensitive trans."
it's definitely not just you! it is gross and very telling as to the general attitude over there
i honestly think that's more concerning than my dust-up with their admin bc changing an individual's mind is far easier than changing the mindset of an entire community. without a concerted moderation effort like we had during the great transphobe purge i unfortunately don't really see it improving
Ive been trying to improve things but yeah if you guys feel like it would be an issue that comes up again between the communities youre free to handle federation however you want including defederating from us. Just been trying to make that not happen due to misunderstandings and things were improving. Im going to be adding a conduct guide in the future for our members the follow on a supporting site and hopefully get more people around to manage things
There are a lot of people in other instances in that thread as well (a lot of which you guys wont see comments from in posts in the instance anyways due to them not being on the whitelist even before it gets looked at by mods) and within the instance usually this isnt an issue before this case but we generally try to leave things for mods to deal with if possible to help admins with all of the tasks so things can be less strict sometimes (especially if not reported)
Edit: also note im reading and taking into account all the things you guys are saying in the thread, just dont have time to respond to everyone
for what it's worth i do see you making a genuine effort. regardless of how things pan out, i appreciate that your response hasn't been "lol fuck off [slurs]" or getting defensive.
Yeah at the end of the day everyones human and we all should try to get along as much as possible including refining our current stances/ways we deal with things in the presence of new info rather than ad hominem people. Usually theres a lot of ideas brought up that one person themselves doesnt think of so trying to discuss and get those ideas. Been getting a lot of negative sentiment in this situation while doing so so might have to just heads down work on improvements for a bit now to improve on my mental health and just get some meditation working time but if anyone needs to get into contact with me for something you want to bring up feel free to dm my programming.dev account at @[email protected] . Thanks everyone thats been giving stuff for me to think about in the thread already as well.