Ohhh, I get you now. Yes, that's likely a thing most of them would believe.

(Not saying I agree or disagree with it, just trying to explain what Hexbear typically implies to most people in a factual, unbiased way because you said you're out of the loop.)

Hexbear existed as an instance prior to the Reddit API changes of 2023. They'd been around for a few years. Most instances federate by default with everyone, but Hexbear took a slower opening of it because they already had an established culture. (Think of this similarly to people discussing the pros/cons of federating with Threads. It would be a big change to the way things are now so it's controversial.) It's possible they weren't ever federated with beehaw.org (your instance) so you may have never seen them or interacted with them.