I think it has become more than apparent that our federation with Hexbear has degraded the quality of browsing on this instance. I’m generally for open federation, but the amount of brigading and general toxicity is not conducive to the friendly communications that make Lemmy great.
This isn’t reddit, linking between instances is how this platform works. There are users who might only be federated with the instance where a link is posted and not the instance where the original post is.