Right, so the Discord had a trans/enby channel that was trans/enby only and a cis mod of that channel failed to disclose this after being there for a while, which pissed a lot of people off. That same mod was also accused of soliciting people in the chat, with evidence provided, but this was outright denied by the mods. It got to the point where even mentioning anything about these controversies got you permabanned. Something like 2/3rds of the trans community there just left after that. It didn't feel like a safe space anymore. That mod remained mod for a good while afaik.

A splinter Discord server formed amidst all this and they were bitter as hell about it, with some members making a point to raid Hexbear, which afaik, was run by the Discord mods at the time. Somebody started making spammy John Kerry posts because it pissed the mods off, and it became a thing. Whether that started with the splinter server or they just adopted it, it nonetheless became a popular way to troll there. Ban evasion is so easy on Lemmy that there wasnt much that mods could do besides just issue rapid bans on sight.

I refused to come to the Hexbear.net for YEARS because I didn't know this place was under new management, and I initially opposed Lemmygrad federating with Hexbear because the Discord mods fucked over the trans community back in the day. I changed my vote when I found out more about modern Hexbear not having the Discord mods and having a good reputation for being trans friendly.

Didn't we used to have a kerryposting bot similar to the amber bot?

It was literally just spamming John Kerry in the discord chats for no reason and it was grandfathered in on Hexbea