Mods prioritize things good. Are least make the fbi post in self crit for public humiliation

      • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        51·
        6 days ago

        Do you think if the US government wanted to link us to our Hexbear usernames they’d struggle with that? Opsec on here is much more about not getting doxxed and harassed by weird right wingers. If the FBI wants to find me it won’t be very difficult.

        • DefinitelyNotAPhone [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          32·
          6 days ago

          I don’t think people here have a good sense of just how invasive and all-consuming digital surveillance goes. The server that hosts this site is likely rented from a data center that could be yanked and data mined by any federal agency with a warrant and 30 seconds of notice, the traffic all routes through NSA blackbox sites, and there’s a nonzero chance the device anyone uses to browse here is phoning traffic home to the feds anyway (thanks Google!).

          If you’re concerned about feds knowing you shitpost here, then you shouldn’t be shitposting here. A FOIA request isn’t putting anyone here on anyone’s radar that wasn’t already there.

          • MouthyHooker [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
            19·
            6 days ago

            Fucking thank you!!! As a sex worker, I know my hooker alias is linked to my government name in a federal law enforcement database and that governments use facial recognition technology to detain sex workers at international borders. We have anecdotal evidence of this happening for at least the past 6 years. If you’re a leftist who has done any fedposting at all without using op sec that borders on clinical paranoia, you should assume you’re on a list. Knowing you’re on a list doesn’t mean you should throw all caution to the wind, but people should know that you are never really anonymous online and behave accordingly.

            The feds will show up at your house with printouts of your social media fedposts.

      • Drewfro66@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
        25·
        6 days ago

        I’m a public-facing member of an org. Everyone else in this website would be too if they weren’t cowards.

        I’m not going to post my name on the Internet because any groyper with a VPN could mail a pipe bomb to my apartment. But if you haven’t gone to your local county/city council and told your local sheriff/police commissioner “My name is [Drew] and I am a Communist, I believe you should be fired and your job abolished”, you’re a liberal.

          • Drewfro66@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
            16·
            6 days ago

            This is a completely fair response and I think I was overly broad with my original comment. For what it’s worth, I don’t believe I’m a badass, I’m a joke of an organizer - I’m just speaking from the perspective of someone active in the scene. And left-wing security culture has by far been more of a detriment to organization locally than a boon.

            If someone doesn’t have the time, energy, or inclination to do organizing work IRL I think that’s totally fine. Everyone has the right to enjoy their personal time how they see fit, and that may include posting on a niche left-wing Internet forum; and not everyone is in a good place in their life to do organizing work.

            What bugs me is clowns on the Internet spreading self-defeating paranoia-induced “privacy best practices”. Read any modern work of theory; hell, listen to a shitty leftist podcast; and they’ll tell you that the most effective weapon the Capitalist class has is not shooting you with a gun or putting you in jail; it’s the chilling effect on speech that their threats engender.

            It is asinine to consider filing a FOIA request on Hexbear a serious mistake.

          • JustSo [she/her, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
            10·
            6 days ago

            That’s kind of the point. We have to watch out because sometimes the opportunity comes along and you find yourself pulled into a local action group and suddenly you’re “a badass” because you’re helping a bunch of boomers fight a multimillionaire capitalist known for sending violent men to the houses of the people who stand up to them and their projects.

            Not me of course I’m just a harmless liberal.

  • Drewfro66@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    771·
    6 days ago

    Left-Wing security culture is paranoid and idiotic. I think it’s a bit silly to file a FOIA request about a niche left-wing online forum but it wasn’t, like, snitching lmao. It’s publicly available information.

    Just for this I will write to the CIA, NSA, DOD, as well as all my local representatives (Governor, federal Rep, state Rep, Mayor, City Council president, and county council long-term planning chairman) to inform them of the existence of Hexbear dot Net. Expect the site to be shut down and all users jailed within the week. If you require assistance smuggling a pack of cigarettes into jail up your butt, DM me.

  • Nakoichi [they/them]@hexbear.netMEnglish
    301·
    6 days ago

    Yeah that was an incredibly shortsighted, disrespectful, and at worst possibly dangerous thing to do.

    I was at work hence no action taken on my part yet. I advocate just banning both those accounts on principle and to teach them not to do shit like that.

    • bdonvrAEnglish
      33·
      6 days ago

      Sorry for the issues. In the original post someone made about making a FOIA request the responses seemed positive. I don’t want to cause any issues with HB, y’all are great. I had more responses in this thread but I ultimately I do think it was against better judgement. I don’t think there’s much to risk in putting in a request about an open, public site but I agree with @[email protected] - there’s also little upsides and was best left alone.

    • JustSo [she/her, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      27·
      6 days ago

      I hope you will read my posts in the thread where the discussion turned into a minor struggle session. I feel partially responsible for leading the discussion in a direction that got the torches lit.

      I think this user has demonstrated contrition, made no effort to hide their HB identity, operates an instance, co-operates in the federation to some small extent and is guilty of little more than being a silly goose.

      Without serious and regular discussion about OPSEC and our minimum expectations of users in this regard, it is arbitrary to punish this user with a permaban. Their mistake could be our learning opportunity, while the stakes are still incredibly low, to consider moving into the new year with a sober analysis of all these related subjects. Some good could come of it, but a quiet ban as a smack on the wrist sends a message to a very tiny group of people paying attention right now and IMHO would not be a positive or necessary move, where alternative solutions that are positive and might be necessary and useful for the future security of the site and its users exist and are highlighted by this minor event.

      Note I am unfamiliar with the user in question and my monkey-brain loyalty wants me to side with @GalaxyBrain for irrational reasons, I am posting sincerely at risk of alienating a user I appreciate.

      Lets not start the new year off with some vindictive ban shit, definitely not anything rash or impulsive.

      With all due respect for your limited time and with gratitude for your efforts in helping hexbear stay rad.

    • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      32·
      6 days ago

      Someone freedom of information acted hexbear and it’s taken a really long time to get removed. I called the poster a snitch repeatedly and made a lot of joke posts surrounding it thst I think are pretty keen. But yeah someone asked the fbi how much they knew about hexbear like that doesn’t draw attention and maybe put people in danger. My opsec sucks cause come at me bro. But I feel pretty strongly about someone just essentially emailing the feds to say this site is potentially interesting. I’ll take my own risk but I won’t compromise others and this is very much doing that. Never contact the fucking fbi requesting info about aledtist forum. They’re for sure keeping an eye on it now if they werent before.

        • JustSo [she/her, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          41·
          6 days ago

          No, we’re still as open as any pseudonymous clearnet forum with anonymous read access. ANY malicious actor could do more damage to the site (a banned user for example, or a right wing troll crew) at any time without even exposing themselves to us.

          This is not a forum for serious organising of the sort of activity that would draw state/federal/national/transnational cop attention.

          But the volcel police are always watching.

        • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
          231·
          6 days ago

          No, but it was pretty irresponsible. It’s getting publicly available info on what the fbi has on you, but asking in and of itself is just unnecessary and can only do harm and is at best pointless.

        • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          21·
          6 days ago

          It’s more of a

          “Hey feds! What dirt do you have on hexbear.net, aka chapo.chat?”

          “Let us check…nothing. You went through all that effort to contact us for that. Should we have a file on it?”

          Hangs up

          • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
            28·
            6 days ago

            I can pretty much guarantee that they receive enough frivolous requests that they don’t bother to take a deeper look at every one that turns up blank. Even if they did, they’re just going to find leftist shit posters that don’t organise anything more than the occasional fundraiser and book club. If they care about any of Hexbears users it will be for their irl activities, not their posting.

          • nandos_house_of_glues [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
            12·
            6 days ago

            with regards to the “encouragement” thread, people here are always posting under a thousand layers of irony, but talking to or inquiring with the feds for any reason is generally a bad idea, and i don’t really care about how minor or fruitless it seems to some. it costs you absolutely nothing to not contact the feds.

            • SevenSkalls [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              9·
              6 days ago

              It could’ve been interesting though if they did have something on us. It would’ve been worth it to know and doesn’t really cost us anything that they made the request. People are making these requests all the time, literally anyone can do it. YouTubers, podcasters, journalists, there are so many frivolous requests, it’s not that big a deal. We’re not all suddenly going to get swatted or get a file because some office stone had to do a ctrl-f in their database for some dumb, niche website. This site is nothing compared to the more public facing organizations that do actual work in the real world.