I am seeing posts from https://hexbear.net/ once again. Anyone know what happened since they lost their domain name? How did they get it back?
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The admins got it back quite a while ago, the last bit of time has been ensuring smooth federation and using it as an opportunity to poll whether refederation was even what everyone wanted, as well as which style of federation (block list vs allow list, or none at all). Things are smoother now!
Did they end up choosing block list or allow list? I hope it was the former. Allowlist will exclude small instances and harm federation diversity.
71·2 days agoThey went with allow list as it used to be
I believe they went with broader federation, though obviously with the defederated instances remaining blocked.
Removed by mod
They’re tankies, like commies but instead of sharing and supporting each other they want to kill minorites while pretending to be leftists.
https://chapo.chat/post/4472297
The issue was that the domain expired and the original user that set up the domain was MIA… but according to this like a month later the admin awoke from hiberation 🐻 and managed to restore the domain (it was enough of a grace period from the registrar to bypass the auction) and give the current admins shared access.
There were some ongoing server issues beyond that but as far as I know the issue appears resolved. Lemmy.ca is not federated with them so that’s about as far as I’ll look into it.
Thanks! The link is helpful.
Look like they got the domain back a while ago. Wonder why federation took so long.
Well, they lost it because it expired.
They probably repurchased it.
A whois says that the domain was reregistered on Feb 19th 2025 via porkbun.com.
What a dork. Glad my instance is defederated from that hot mess
Jesus Christ. They’re really convinced that everyone is as invested in their bullshit as they are. Like, completely and sincerely convinced.
It’s the only foothold of propaganda the CCP has in the fediverse, so they aren’t going away without a fight
Hey, grad and ml still exist.
I joined shortly before the hexbear nonsense so I haven’t seen them in full force but in my limited experience grad is by far worse than .ml, .ml at least appears to keep an air or normalcy grad is fucking insane.
You’re right. A lot of grad and hex users have ml alts so they can post to instances that defederate them.
I’m glad that I am not just imagining things and other people have noticed the difference.
Only?
deleted by creator
The link is helpful. Thanks!
So first, fans of an actually quite good (as I understand) leftist podcast got together on Reddit and started talking to one another.
The dark forces that are at work on the modern internet can’t have something like that, so they invested a pretty tiny amount of resources into sidetracking the whole thing into pettiness, vicious bad-spirited trolling, and slavish adherence to the stupidest and hot-button-est of hot-button leftism issues available. Because of Reddit’s unique combination of anonymity plus unchecked power for the (also anonymous) mods, it worked perfectly, and the whole place became a loud and hostile waste of time.
Still in waste-of-time form, the whole thing migrated over to Lemmy when Lemmy became available. It sits there festering, fueled by a combination of deliberate distortion by people who hate the left, people who just like having a community and stick around (avoiding the “bad” parts and politics), and people with some degree of mental illness who genuinely think Russia is good, attacking anyone who isn’t performatively left to the point of caricature is productive, and it’s everyone else who is the problem.
Because, by this point, the only people around are fairly dysfunctional, they had some kind of falling-out with the person who had paid for their web hosting, who for the same reason had chosen a corrupt registrar, who tried to extort them for thousands of dollars. They refused, the registrar presumably abandoned the effort when whatever counter-troll had bid the price up didn’t bother to buy it at the wildly inflated price it landed at, and they got back the original domain and restarted as if nothing had happened.
.ml has some competition again
Please tell me .world will remain defederated from them…
First question that comes to mind is: did they get it back, or did someone else snatch it from them and also made it a Lemmy instance? Like, one of the conservative comms (forgot which instance; world or ee?) had the mods banned and a new mod took over and turned it into a satirical circle jerk thing where it’s making fun of conservatives/conservative memes.
Edit: No… It does look like the OG. So it’s not that.
No, they got it back but couldn’t turn federation back on due to some weird issues.
That sounds more likely to be world.
Thank you for reminding me how hilarious that was!
That whole domain lost thing only lasted for a week or so and then they got it back. I don’t know how they did it, maybe it was still on hold. The registrar seemed a bit shady to me… But they were back online a few days after that incident.
No, porkbun is legit.
Wasn’t it sav.com or something? Pretty sure it wasn’t porkbun.
Read it was pork in another comment. a quick whois shows:
$ whois hexbear.net Domain Name: HEXBEAR.NET Registry Domain ID: 2584175083_DOMAIN_NET-VRSN Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.porkbun.com Registrar URL: http://porkbun.com/ Updated Date: 2025-02-19T05:16:07Z Creation Date: 2021-01-12T00:35:22Z Registry Expiry Date: 2026-01-12T00:35:22Z Registrar: Porkbun LLC Registrar IANA ID: 1861 Registrar Abuse Contact Email: abuse@porkbun.com Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: 5038508351 Domain Status: clientDeleteProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientDeleteProhibited Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited Name Server: NILE.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM Name Server: PIPER.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM DNSSEC: unsigned URL of the ICANN Whois Inaccuracy Complaint Form: https://www.icann.org/wicf/ >>> Last update of whois database: 2025-04-01T08:45:05Z <<<Hmm, the auction domain was sav.com https://lemmy.world/post/25448410
I mean a whois as of now doesn’t tell us what it was. And I remember some statement from them. Probably in their main channel(?) saying they consider switching DNS registrars…
I’m not that interested in Hexbear, so somone else has to look it up if we want a definite answer.
good to see them back tbh, it’s nice to have lots of people around.
The lore is that simpleton centrists always want everyone included, even if they’re Nazis that have zero good intentions. So they are allowed back to slowly erode the decent parts of Lemmy into another white supremacy chamber.
Don’t bother replying I’m not interested in arguing on this point. I have zero tolerance for Hexbear.
I have zero tolerance for Hexbear
Me same even though you called me hurtful names earlier in your political rage. Isn’t lemmy world small
I’m glad they’re back, people should be exposed to viewpoints outside their bubble by default. If your instance defeds from them, you are delegating your choice and freedom instead of owning it yourself.
I’m on an instance that defeded hex, and I’ve got an alt on an instance that didn’t. Literally nothing lost. The reason loads of instances defeded hex was their habit of brigading. Loads of bad faith arguments, shit talking people…even when they were agreeing with the points being made. Having seen what their contributions to the fed are, I’m glad to have a little less noise. Happy to discuss with people who have different views, but they don’t tend to discuss, they are the equivalent of that one person that talks at you, not with you…
I think that it doesn’t matter if they’re back or not, if you don’t like them (not a huge fan myself) you can go to an instance that defeds them.
you know, normally I’d agree with your point, but not when the offending parties are actually deliberately disruptive jackasses whenever they show up. Hexbear is insufferable. that’s not a critique of their viewpoint, that’s a critique of their behavior. If you come into the sandbox and kick sand in other kids eyes on the regular, don’t be surprised when nobody wants to play with you. It’s a lesson you, they, and most others should’ve learned before middle school, and it has nothing to do with what political ideology they follow.
That was a terrible take, I’m sorry.
hello i’m from there and this is my alt.
I see people say stuff all the time like oh they are tankies who love putin, oh they are against human rights.
It’s really silly. It’s a very lovely leftist (actual leftist) server full of very knowledgeable folks, trans people, bipoc, disabled, vegan and other marginalized comrades.
While very pro marxist-leninist and pro human i don’t see people in there praising putin or uncritically accepting every action that non capitalist governments do. What i do see is a lot of challenging the standard western capitalist propaganda narrative. After spending a couple months on rednote i can tell you that the things I hear from real chinese people align with what i see on hexbear far more than what i was ever told on reddit.
So you can believe the repeated without evidence claims that you’ll see bandied about in this thread, but you can just go there and look and see that it’s entirely baseless for yourself if you’re actually curious.
I love hexbear, it’s one of my favorite places on the entire internet. I have this alt mostly to follow news stuff about trump that doesn’t get federated to there because of defeds (both ways). If i had to choose only one account i would keep my hexbear account though.
Cheers!
don’t see people in there praising putin or uncritically accepting every action that non capitalist governments do. What i do see is a lot of challenging the standard western capitalist propaganda narrative.
That’s nearly all I’ve seen. It appears to me much of the fault lies with critique by US American in particular who seem beyond nuance in politics (not having multiple political parties is perhaps the reason for that), you can be anti Putin (who is a complete cnut, that doeat mean ebery sungle russian is) and anti US (who are now complete cnuts for who they elected but doesn’t mean every single citizen is).
I like seeing the points of view so long may you continue!
I snoop there from time to time, and while it does have a high population of minorities, there is people who are pro-russia. A lot fo people say they only have critical support, but I can’t see how you could have even critical support of russia.
IDK, I used to talk up certain parts of Hexbear (art@hexbear seemed quite good) but your perception of their political views is not what I’ve observed. I tried to talk with them and they more or less instantly threatened me with physical violence and then defederated my instance.
There is a reason they are so widely defederated. They are deliberately obnoxious to “outsiders” in a way that makes it seem unlikely that they’re positioned to succeed at any kind of leftist progress. Usually, attacking everyone around you is not correlated to long-term victory.
I see people say stuff all the time like oh they are tankies who love putin, oh they are against human rights.
https://hexbear.net/search?q=putin&type=Comments&listingType=All&page=1&sort=New
They’re not really “against human rights” per se, as far as I can tell, but at least 50% of them seem to be fanboys for authoritarian regimes, and construct insane frameworks where those regimes aren’t actually violating anyone’s human rights, or “but ‘libs’ believe X Y and Z, those are wrong, and so by contrast with those wrong things, I must be right.” I think more than 50% of the comments in the above link fall into that latter pattern.
Here are some examples of things from the above that are pro-Putin (or at least pro-Putin-adjacent) and also hilariously wrong:
They’ll say this then unironically say that Putin just invaded Ukraine to be mean
Putin is genuinely popular and his party is bolstered by the fact that both the economy and the Ukraine conflict are going well.
Describing United Russia as far right is also not entirely accurate, it’s more like a catchall for anyone who is not a communist and not a western stooge. It includes some very right wing and nationalistic elements, but they are generally quite careful to marginalize those kinds of far right elements that would be destabilizing for the Russian state:
Ethno-nationalists who would create conflict and friction with Russia’s many ethnic minorities, outright Nazis many of whom defected and now fight for Ukraine in Nazi units like the “Russian Volunteer Battalion”, etc.
(That is a hilarious juxtaposition)
It is also one of the most consistently and prolifically vilified countries, due to decades of Cold War propaganda, both during the height of the Cold War and after the USSR’s fall. It is not surprising then that some people would have a hard time wrapping their head around it as neither hero nor villain and as part of a complex dynamic on the world stage, with an even more complex history, grappling with challenging material conditions throughout. But embracing that complexity is an important exercise in getting used to viewing the world beyond the binary lens of good and evil that anti-communist propaganda loves to do.
Got it. (And actually I agree that “good” and “bad” are very poor frameworks for judging state actors from the POV of the individual.) So what do you think of Ukraine? “Pure evil, Nazi government, why do you ask?”
Zelensky knows that Putin is basically a moderate and is hoping for a hardliner to take power afterwards, eternal conflict is the only way to preserve his position and prevent nazi elements from merking him
IDK. I looked over Hexbear for a while after what you said, and as long as you steer clear of certain topics, I think I can agree with you. (And, that was my experience before the defederation.) The same can be said of most Republican uncles at Thanksgiving, though, so it’s not really a solid endorsement of their good nature.
I’m sure they’re pleasant towards you, but the way they act when someone dares to disagree with them is repugnant.
i’ve never seen any rudeness except towards bigots, racists, transphobes, genocide enablers, nazis, right wing shitheels, bad faith provocateurs. I try not to be rude myself but i’m not against it with those types.
I appreciate you taking the time to explain your side,
but there has been rudeness. Obviously, you shouldn’t stay civilised with people who hate you.that’s the entire ‘except towards…’ part of my comment.
The problem is, its not always towards those people.
i guess we just don’t see it the same way then. cheers!
👍
Some Hexbear people were talking excitedly about advocating for Claudia de la Cruz. I pointed out that if Trump wins, they might go into concentration camps (And look! That is happening, some prominent leftists have already been disappeared).
A tide of people pretended that I had said I would be happy about leftists going into concentration camps (I am not), sent me pig ballsacks, threatened me with death, threatened me with being stabbed with an icepick, sent me insults, agreed with each other about what a piece of shit I was, sent me custom-crafted memes to emphasize how much they didn’t care what I thought, and one person seemed like they wanted to have a factual conversation about it (they made some accusations about what reality was that were at least subject enough to proof or disproof to be worth discussing). I decided to try talking about it a little and it went about like you would think.
I’m clearly not a bigot, racist, or et cetera any of those things. Hexbear operates under a sort of “no true scotsman” logic by which anyone who they disagree with is automatically one or all of those things, and so it’s okay to be horrible to anyone they disagree with. Again, that’s why they are widely defederated.
Here’s the thread, including both my unwarranted smugness and Hexbear’s predictable reaction which has nothing to do with anti-bigotry (and, in fact, has played some small role in enabling the worsening of bigotry and genocide, now that Trump is in office): https://ponder.cat/post/525489/763331
no thank you
I do feel like I was smug and insulting out of the gate for more or less no reason. But also, I feel like demanding that I have to come in super respectful and kind, so they can respond in their famous chosen fashion, is laughable. I’m just speaking to them in the language that they clearly are approving of, just from the other side. That’s fair, to me.
Basically, thinking someone is wrong, and telling them so and telling them why, is not “bad faith.” Not in any world. Again this is the Hexbear no-true-scotsman thing, where they’re super open and everyone is welcome except obvious awful horrible liberals who need to be attacked at every turn because they deserve it, and anyone who disagrees with them in any way is obviously that. This is why I tend to talk badly about Hexbear: Because they feel comfortable talking badly about everyone else, and hurling abuse and trolling at anyone and everyone, so fuck 'em. If they don’t want to be treated like that, they can open a conversation about the value of the social contract, and we can talk, but otherwise, oh well.
Edit: The person edited their response, abandoning the debate I guess being unhappy with the nature of it. Seems reasonable, they’re not obligated to talk if they don’t want to. Maybe if I’d sent them a picture of a pig ballsack, they would have been receptive and felt comfortable with how appropriate the whole conversation was.
And anyone who disagrees with them will certainly have at least one of those labels thrown at them.
I haven’t seen that in the year I have been a member of the site. Feel free to show any examples you might have seen but that’s just slander from where i sit.
What’s the hexbear take on the invasion of Ukraine? Genuinely asking you as someone who’s from there.
There’s like 30,000 users there, and we all have our own opinions?
I think that it’s an act of aggression and a violation of international peace. I also think NATO is a tool of capitalist oppression, so it sure seems like the people trying to live their lives in Ukraine are between a rock and a hard place. I wish them safety and freedom, and I hope they are able to find a path to that that avoids subservience to a capitalist agenda like what we are seeing the united states trying to pull right now.
The news comms there aren’t hard to get into if you’d like to go ask yourself, you’ll get a lot of answers most of which will be more informed than mine.
I also think NATO is a tool of capitalist oppression,
Yeah, that’s the take I was expecting to see. A mutual defence pact, formed to protect against the very thing Ukraine is experiencing, is a tool of oppression.
Who is NATO opressing, exactly?
You can think of NATO as a millitary pact of gangsters. The members of NATO make the bulk of their wealth through fleecing the Global South, through processes of Unequal Exchange and brutal IMF loans that come with clauses requiring them to sell off nationalized infrastructure and resources. NATO’s role, other than Anti-Communism, is to essentially form “Big Stick Diplomacy” with countries that do not immediately play ball with their terms.
We can see this in Operation Gladio, as an example. Even ignoring the fact that several heads of NATO have been former Nazis, such as Adolf Heusinger, Leftists have opposed NATO for its role in defending US and EU Imperialism since its foundation. You can see that in modern Communist orgs like PSL’s statement on the Russo-Ukrainian War, or FRSO’s Statement on NATO.
That should give a background on why the Left generally opposes US millitary dominance over the world, and NATO’s role in that. If it’s hard to grasp, look at the ACAB movement. Why do people oppose a group that, on paper, is for “defending the people?” Because in reality, it defends a brutally exploitative system over all else, and thus racist and classist violence is a systemic part of that “defense.”
What are your thoughts on Belt and Road?
Can you narrow it down? I think it’s good to have international cooperation on infrastructure, and is much better than exporting war and misery like the US does.
Riiiight. Sure.
Nothing to do with the fact that pretty much every country that borders Russia has been invaded by them.
Not sure which part of my comment you’re disagreeing with, so not sure how to respond. I included statements from Communist orgs directly, not Hexbear, so you could see that this is fairly universal among the anticapitalist left.
You genuinely don’t think Russia is a threat to its neighbours, do you?
sorry ilovethebomb i’m not here to debate with you there’s lots of other folks that will be happy to i’m sure
And this is why they show up in numbers, or not at all.
👍🏻
Yeah, you and your comrades’ “loveliness” was instantly exposed to be in support of genocidal dictators, and then you slink away. That is the sort of thing we were glad to be rid of, even if for a while.
lol, I don’t owe you anything. i have been answering non loaded questions with no rancor yet look at you trying to put your weird ideas on me.
you have a nice day.
Thanks for the answer regardless, will search for more!
Sorry I should have clarified: not looking for Hexbear lore in general. I have seen a lot of Hexbear content, so I have a solid understanding on the site and the users. Don’t want to start a debate about that here because that debate always turn nasty.
What I am looking for is: what happened in the past month-ish? How did you all lost your domain? How and when did you get it back? Why did it take so long for federation to be back? Is there any other change made to the site during this downtime?
there was a hiccup with the registrar and it got resolved. we voted and almost became hexbear.chat. not very juicy i’m afraid.
edit: misremebered it was .chat not .com
The most anticapitalist instance getting a .com domain would be hilarious
But there gotta be more to the story. Was the registrar being “shady” as @hendrik@palaver.p3x.de said? Why did federation take so long?
sorry that’s my bad it was hexbear.chat that won .com came in third, i voted for another one entirely which is why i misremembered but i went back to look for you.
i think (and recommend verifying yourself the threads on this are all public) the admin who actually owned the domain was on a hiatus when the domain was about to expire. They paid the registrar during the ‘pay us or else’ phase but the registrar put the domain up for auction anyway so it was unclear if we were going to get the domain back. chapo.chat was used as a fallback while we figured out next steps in case the registrar didn’t follow their own rules hence the vote. in the end the registrar realized their error i guess and we got the domain back and everything is fine now.
Since the spirit of the site is the comrades and not the domain name everyone took it in good fun for the most part.
I think the admins wanted to made sure everything was stable before refederation because they are polite and didn’t want to cause more work for other admins, but that’s just a guess if they said specifically why i didn’t catch it.
The news section there is great, and while there are a few comments that echo Russian stuff, that is easier to ignore than the massive USA liberal (conservative) views that dominate some other communities.
In particular I like the middle east coverage .
