Is there more to this story?

https://beehaw.org/post/567170 Presumably the 196 connection is that we are one of the larger communities to migrate from Reddit and thus a large part of this user explosion, but I don't see 196 users being particularly problematic.

If I'm on neither of the affected instances, and I'm subscribed to resources in both sides of the defederation, am I affected?

no, everyone without a beehaw account is safe thankfully, you can still sub to beehaw communities, not sure if you can comment there though