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.
Its ubiquitous for a reason. They have been nothing but trouble since they federated.
I wouldnt even mind defederating them for now and then deleting the blacklist once the instance blocking feature is added.