The data this is based on comes from https://lemmyverse.net where you can just download a full json of the data they have (I excluded all communities marked as "suspicious")
EDIT: The data if you sort by active users last month:
One amusing bit re: hexbear, it's been around almost as long as lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml, but it seems was only added to the tracker last year, as it shows up as 12 months old, I have to imagine it's including posts/comments from before that timeframe because bozhe moi:
Even if you divide the hexbear comments by 4 they'd still be in the top 3 2 excluding the reddit repost bot. Yappers.
Right because this corner of the internet is so important and well-visited we gotta spend our state funds on a propaganda network, planting the seeds years in advance of it being able to germinate and fill it to the brim with emojis. Do you even know what a good bot costs nowadays? Vladimir Putin would have our heads.
Oh come on now. Think a little. What is hexbear all about? LGBT and Communism. Now, guess which two things Putin heads the most? Do you really think that we have money to fund people LARPing as gay commies, on an isolated instance, in an obscure social network, in a country that's already extremely short on cash because of war? Get your head out the arse.
Stuff like becoming "General Secretary" for life, concentration camps for Uighurs, hostility with Taiwan, India, and Indonesia, takeover of Hong Kong, and Document 9 of 2013?
You like how LGBT aren't allowed to marry or adopt? You like that China are a corrupt capitalist oligarchy run by a militaristic dictatorship hand in hand with Billionaires because they at least claim to be communist?
The only place you can find tens or hundreds of people singing the praises of an actual living dictator is in a place they own.