Some other contributing factors that haven't been mentioned here yet:

They were their own instance for over 3 years before joining federation. That's 3 years of growth that all the new big instances from rexit didn't have, so when they joined, they were INSTANTLY one of the loudest voices in the room.

Their original goal for federating was to actively spread their ideology, and they were VERY aggressive and trolly about it (as they are about basically everything, that's essentially their inside joke). This ended up generating a lot of extra moderation work for instances and communities that have rules against being actively disruptive. There was eventually enough communication between admins and mods across hexbear and other instances that they toned back most of the trolliness, at least outside of their own communities.

They just shit up the place. Better off without them

My understanding is that it's not so much a "controversy" as a general dislike. We tend to dislike people who we feel are interpreting every little thing we say, no matter how innocuous, in the worst possible light. We tend to dislike people who hurl insults at us unprovoked, who respond to simple questions with weird pictures of Gargamel and other such content.

And then there's the existence of communities they have solely for the purpose of harassing other non-hexbear users and brigading communities from instances with the misfortune of federating with them, harassment campaigns which appear to be tolerated, if not encouraged, by certain other instances ending in .ml

While I have some serious political concerns with some of their shared views, I also think I'd have a lot in common with them -- a concern for LGBT+ rights, for instance -- and for the plight of the working class. Sadly, my experience has led me instead to instantly blocking any hexbear account on sight and disengaging with any of their content. I think other users in the fediverse have had similar such experiences. I've seen entire instances attempt to tolerate them, only to find that they're just inviting piranhas to the goldfish tank, and consequently defederating them.

You will only get anti-hexbear answers because iirc theyve been defederated. Hexbear is a communist instance that has its roots from /r/ChapoTrapHouse. They're disliked by some beause they're aggressive and often intentionally inflammatory.

What they're NOT is alt right trolls in disguise as some idiots claim. Some people just can't comprehend that there's any position to the left of neoliberalism.

Personally, seeing pig that's crapped itself is an instant block.

Other than that, they seem quick to troll, but have generally been helpful when I've asked an honest question.

There's a bit of "oh noes, commiez!" (red scare), including that stupid "commy = nazy lol lmao haha" strawman, but I don't think that it tells the whole picture. It's more about how a lot of them behaves than the political views themselves: proselytism out-of-place, childishness, and specially witch hunting.

Just go to the site and refresh to see new weird taglines at the top every load and you’ll probably get a good idea.

I think a lot of the opinions on hexbear came from when they first federated. There are the general things like it is a leftist instance, and from what I can tell, they like to shit post. I do recommend lurking for a bit and deciding yourself, they do have their own culture there.

During the initial federation there were a couple of things that lead to their reputation -they have a culture of calling out bad takes, instead of down votes they were comment, so they had a lot of engagement

-with their culture of calling things out, they have a community called the dunk tank, that is usually screenshots of other users with bad takes

-they use a lot of pictures in replies, when first federated these would come out really large, taking up the whole thread. This was unintentional and should be fixed now. A popular one was PPB, which is a picture of pig balls with poop on it, as you can imagine this rubbed some people the wrong way.

They are very harsh against Nazi idealogy and they will dunk on liberal takes, but they are very open and accepting in general other than that. An example of this is I have seen multiple posts from a user who admits he has a drug problem (meth I believe) and in each post I have seen they are treated with respect and as a person, something I don't see very often.

They also get accused of being China and Russian shills, but I have seen a mix of support and criticism. It just depends on what the topic is.

Form your own opinion, check out some posts, they aren't the boogeyman some comments say they are.

Hardcore commies are intolerant as Nazis and the paradox of tolerance requires we reject intolerant speech.