CTH did more than just troll, but doing something in addition to trolling doesn’t make you not a troll. Most of the rest of Reddit didn’t experience the fun in-sub content, they just experienced its trolling and brigading, and we don’t need to pretend that Hexbear and r/CTH aren’t largely one and the same. They don’t need federation to do the internal culture stuff you’re waxing poetic about, they need federation to troll.

And I couldn’t care less whether calling CTH or your thousands of friends trolls is going to make you hostile. THEY were hostile to other people because it was fun for them. The trolling is already here via the OP. It’s tiresome and just degrades forums for their targets and everyone not in on the joke trying to figure out what their issue is. You guys don’t get to spend years trolling reddit just to say “we have a new name now, so you can’t judge us on our prior actions”.

Maybe admins will wait and see. If somehow it isn’t a huge source of trolling then I fully support federating. But I’m going to say I don’t think the odds are good. And if the admins do what you expect and don’t go back and revisit the choice I can’t say I’m going to think it’s a huge loss.