See this post (chapo.chat is an alternate domain name for Hexbear).

Hexbear also has an official Mastodon account, where admins post updates. You can append .rss to the URL to get an RSS feed.

  • Makan@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    I have a forum ready if anyone wants to join. Well, not ready, but it’s getting there.

    Let me know if anyone can help me out with it.

  • Makan@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    22·
    2 days ago

    After reading @darkcalling@lemmygrad.ml and what they said, I’ve said the following below in a reply to them (let me know if I got the pronouns right; I myself am queer and take the correct way to refer to someone seriously):

    Yeah, I was apart of the mod team, but they just betrayed me, and barely listened to me. There was one that seemed to hate me and they accused me of doxxing someone when I accidentally revealed, but quickly deleted, the state that they were living in. Keep in mind that I was informed multiple times that that’s not doxxing and that doxxing would involve, say, the address, first and last name, town, family members, etc., etc., etc. I apologized multiple times, they said I didn’t, and that was the end of it, and later, I was banned.

    My issue was that they didn’t resolve this till months afterward. I would’ve preferred that they just banned me right there and then when I made the mistake rather than just let six months pass after the fact or at least give enact some sort of punishment then. But if they were going to let a mod like me get away with it, one they treated rudely from the get-go, then maybe they shouldn’t have been mods and admins to begin with…

    Oh yeah, and, unfortunately, “dunk culture” was a real issue, but the mods barely did anything until later and by that point it just rankled people, rightly, for how they handled it.

    They weren’t good administrators. They allowed things to pass for people or issues until they got popular in the moment (usually, this meant that enough people at the time were there and could get others to participate in making a stink about it at that point in time so the popularity of such a thing was always dubious), but barely did anything for the little gal, so to speak. They only did stuff if the community made a big ruckus over it. I saw many people bullied over trifling shit. And many left in my time as mod and afterward, when I was still a member.

    I liked Carcosa, but she (I hope I got the pronouns right, I will correct if need be) just listened to others, and deferred to others. You know those leaders sometimes that just defer to their subordinates do or say? That was Carcosa and it showed. She just repeated what others told her.

    I liked Othello and we were good friends, but they were barely listened to either by the other mods, and one of the mods in the inner circle shot down any proposals that didn’t jive with the rest of the mods, who weren’t BIPOC. And Othello was BIPOC like me. Go figure.

    Many gave “cease and desist” orders but it was barely used or enforced so people got badgered and left.

    • Makan@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      I do want to clarify that I really liked my time there, but there were definite problems, and I hope they’ve resolved them, but whether they would is another matter.

      Not all the staff was bad and not everyone there was a “bully,” like I said above. There were a lot of great projects being made too. I liked it. I just thought it could be better.

      • footfaults@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
        2·
        1 day ago

        I think this post is very useful. You have mentioned you are considering deleting, but I would appreciate it staying up.

  • darkcalling@lemmygrad.ml
    24·
    8 days ago

    Thread on where they go from here:

    https://chapo.chat/post/4470321

    Right now the registrar stands to make over $2000 from auctioning this site. That’s a lot more than whatever renewal HB were going to pay and once it sells for that whoever buys it then has a much higher renewal fee thereafter (hundreds of dollars a year probably) as a result of that valuation which they can in theory reap year after year. Even should the person buying it drop it immediately their hosting company stands to reap more from this one auction and year than if they’d continued to host with them for 10 years.

    This was entirely a self-own on HexBear’s part. A list:

    1. Their admins did not press strongly enough to get access they needed to the domain name account.

    2. Admins knowing the person having these details was flaky did not monitor things like domain renewal and such, if they had they would have noticed while the grace period was still active and could (apparently) have quickly reached the person with access within the 30 days required and fixed it. The person with access was able to be reached we see now within 2-3 days. That’s not a difficult person to reach or they got damn lucky with timing.

    3. Person who had access almost certainly got some sort of notice. This either went to an unmonitored email 🙄 or was ignored.

    4. Their post on it here is made by an anonymous admin. Once again their admins are obfuscating, not being transparent with the userbase and acting a too much like bad actor groups like MAC on reddit in thinking themselves some appointed council of ideology and ethics in charge of their userbase and guiding them to preferred conclusions established by discussions within this secret group.

    (To be fair to 4 their userbase does need guidance given how many left-libs and people who haven’t read theory are there, they have let in a lot of liberalism but too often these struggles and edicts are not on principled meaningful matters like addressing the misogyny issue but on pet causes, minor tiffs, arguments over phrasing, etc)

    • footfaults@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      3·
      1 day ago

      The one thing that I always hated about those votes on Hexbear was how they intentionally used the most difficult to visually discern emojis for each of the options (Really, look at how similar option 1 and 3 are from each other) and they also try to put their thumb on the scale by making option 2 the emoji with the more positive expression. The most bullshit, baby brained consent manufacturing I’ve ever seen.

      • darkcalling@lemmygrad.ml
        1·
        17 hours ago

        Yeah it’s pretty weird how they use emojis like that for voting and all of the same character at that with different expressions. And I completely agree it’s biasing and something the mods can manipulate a bit because one of them is literally a character frowning, another a character grinning and those have influences I’m sure. Very unserious if I have to be honest and part of why I’m glad we have lemmygrad because it’s kind of a never-ending festival of leftist trolling/memeing over there a lot of the time and that gets draining. There are times it feels a little nice of course, I’m not saying there’s no room for it as it can be a good thing after a long day or week but it reaches its limits at times.

      • blunder@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
        2·
        1 day ago

        The most bullshit, baby brained consent manufacturing I’ve ever seen.

        Lmao I think you might be overreacting a little bit to a goofy vote polling system on a shitposting site

    • Horse {they/them}@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      41·
      2 days ago

      (To be fair to 4 their userbase does need guidance given how many left-libs and people who haven’t read theory are there, they have let in a lot of liberalism but too often these struggles and edicts are not on principled meaningful matters like addressing the misogyny issue but on pet causes, minor tiffs, arguments over phrasing, etc)

      this assumes that the admin/mod team are more advanced than the userbase, for which there is very little evidence
      as far as i know, only 1 member of the admin team is even in a party, which i would consider the bare minimum for anyone trying to “steer the ship” so to speak

      • Makan@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
        21·
        2 days ago

        Honestly, if they’re posting stuff anonymously, that does speaks to some lack of transparency on their part, whether they knew or not ahead of time.

    • Makan@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      To be fair to 4 their userbase does need guidance given how many left-libs and people who haven’t read theory are there, they have let in a lot of liberalism but too often these struggles and edicts are not on principled meaningful matters like addressing the misogyny issue but on pet causes, minor tiffs, arguments over phrasing, etc)

      Actually… I agree with this.

    • Makan@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      We could do without calling it a “self-own.”

      Hexbear had problems, but come on, let’s be a bit respectful.

    • Commiejones@lemmygrad.ml
      8·
      6 days ago

      Why bother doing a vote if its only going to be open for 12 hrs? Its a world wide site with users that dont log in every day.

      • footfaults@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
        3·
        1 day ago

        They’ve done this a number of times about a bunch of issues. The admins/mods must think everyone is as online as they are. I was very online on hexbear back in the day but even this would always make me go 🤔

    • blunder@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      13·
      8 days ago

      Let alone saying nothing to the community about the impending issue and mitigations (fallback sites, risk of cyberattack if continuing to use the old domain, …)

      • Erika4sis [she/xem]@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
        11·
        8 days ago

        The lack of warning when they knew of this issue well ahead of time, the lack of accountability after it happened, and the lack of clear information have frankly undermined my trust in Hexbear’s moderation team. Ultimately I still favor Hexbear’s culture over Lemmygrad’s, and don’t know how much more trustworthy the admins here are, though.

        • Makan@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
          21·
          2 days ago

          Yeah, I was apart of the mod team, but they just betrayed me, and barely listened to me. There was one that seemed to hate me and they accused me of doxxing someone when I accidentally revealed, but quickly deleted, the state that they were living in. Keep in mind that I was informed multiple times that that’s not doxxing and that doxxing would involve, say, the address, first and last name, town, family members, etc., etc., etc. I apologized multiple times, they said I didn’t, and that was the end of it, and later, I was banned.

          My issue was that they didn’t resolve this till months afterward. I would’ve preferred that they just banned me right there and then when I made the mistake rather than just let six months pass after the fact or at least give enact some sort of punishment then. But if they were going to let a mod like me get away with it, one they treated rudely from the get-go, then maybe they shouldn’t have been mods and admins to begin with…

          Oh yeah, and, unfortunately, “dunk culture” was a real issue, but the mods barely did anything until later and by that point it just rankled people, rightly, for how they handled it.

          They weren’t good administrators. They allowed things to pass for people or issues until they got popular in the moment (usually, this meant that enough people at the time were there and could get others to participate in making a stink about it at that point in time so the popularity of such a thing was always dubious), but barely did anything for the little gal, so to speak. They only did stuff if the community made a big ruckus over it. I saw many people bullied over trifling shit. And many left in my time as mod and afterward, when I was still a member.

          I liked Carcosa, but she (I hope I got the pronouns right, I will correct if need be) just listened to others, and deferred to others. You know those leaders sometimes that just defer to their subordinates do or say? That was Carcosa and it showed. She just repeated what others told her.

          I liked Othello and we were good friends, but they were barely listened to either by the other mods, and one of the mods in the inner circle shot down any proposals that didn’t jive with the rest of the mods, who weren’t BIPOC. And Othello was BIPOC like me. Go figure.

          Many gave “cease and desist” orders but it was barely used or enforced so people got badgered and left.

        • darkcalling@lemmygrad.ml
          8·
          7 days ago

          I’m glad to have both.

          There are certain times I just need to be with other ML’s but lemmygrad is admittedly small and therefore limited in the amount of discussion a post gets as well as how many topics are posted and it’s nice to have a bigger community even if it’s less laser-aligned with my philosophy on all aspects and at times has a culture I need a breather from for a few minutes despite overall liking it. I enjoy community events like movie nights that you have over there a great deal and I think it’s a very good thing.

          The admins as a whole I cannot say. The head admin, the owner is a main lemmy dev and I also know them from reddit where they were consistently a poster with principled, quality effort years before I ever heard of this place or lemmy was really even publicly known at all. So I trust the top admin here quite a bit, if they dipped out the whole lemmyverse would notice and ideologically I trust them to an incredible amount.

        • blunder@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
          6·
          6 days ago

          Agreed. It’d probably take a full changeover of the admin team to give me any confidence that if something is wrong someone will say something… But even opening the door to possible cyberattack and doxxing of comrades is always going to be a stain on the website for me. I’ve been on from day 1 but I question if I will continue with the site after this – not that it really matters if I’m there lol but still

          Really malicious negligence by the admin team against the community

          • Erika4sis [she/xem]@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
            5·
            6 days ago

            For a while I’ve fantasized about starting a new Lemmy instance, which would be either an Esperanto or Norwegian language equivalent to Hexbear. When I’ve spoken to comrades about this they’ve been interested but said they didn’t have the resources for it. Depending on how the coming weeks play out I might have to adopt a Pippi Longstocking mindset on this matter…

  • The Free Penguin@lemmygrad.ml
    21·
    10 days ago

    This is why we must have laws against the buying and selling of domains. Domains that are unused must become collective property.

  • loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    15·
    10 days ago

    Hexbear has an official Mastodon account at https://toots.matapacos.dog/@hexbear

    Hexbear admins intermittently post updates there in case of emergencies such as this one. People wanting to follow the state of Hexbear as told by official sources should look into following this account. You can also append .rss to the URL to get an RSS feed.

    @GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml please edit this information into the main post.