Yeaaaah, that's sketchy. I can understand them blocking the communities out of fear of legal risk. They didn't sign up for that kinda risk and we all know that piracy oriented sites get targeted by legal action (isn't there currently an ongoing attempt to get Reddit to turn over user info about people who accessed piracy communities there?). But why the heck would they hide that they blocked the communities?

It's the same as with Hexbear. I can understand why they defederated from that instance, since I've seen how they comment. They're extremely aggressive. Even when they're right, they're assholes about it. And they're often straight up supporting Russia, which is batshit crazy (they have no nuance, acting as if there can't both be Nazis in Ukraine and Russia can also be an evil aggressor). But Lemmy.World was happy to silently defederate until they got called out. Even despite the fact that for Exploding Heads, they at least had a big post about it (even though Exploding Heads is far worse).