This website is not a threat to capital. This response is frankly ridiculous.
this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2025
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chapotraphouse
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998 users here now
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Of course not, but you don't have to be a threat to capital for some dork with a grudge to get your house swatted or whatever. I can understand peoples aversion to fedposting.
5hen let's just all post with our real names
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.
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.
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.
Those things are not remotely comparable.
Hi officer, my name Carol Marks and my dad is Lenin
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.
I'm a public-facing member of an org. Everyone else in this website would be too if they weren't cowards.
watch out, we got a badass here
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.
Yeah I don't disagree people should be organizing in person I just thought posing it as cowardice to not do so was a little bit over the top. I'm neutral on whether FOIA-ing this silly shitposting website was bad or good.
Thank you for calling me out and keeping me honest; I think we're basically on the same wavelength
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The more I get involved with my org the more I agree with the take
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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.
If you require assistance smuggling a pack of cigarettes into jail up your butt, DM me.
You only get vapes in British prisons now because of woke smh my head
It turns out, we have an extensive file from the National Park Service. Nobody else heard of us.
Hello Mr FBI I would like to know what information you have about us
We know you're a bunch of libs lmaooooooooooo
do i even want to know? happy new year, hexbears
Someone caught a temp ban for saying 
was cool and heroic, and someone else recently made a FOIA request to the FBI about Hexbear
what the fuck why would they do that D:
Someone suggested it like a week ago as like a joke. Everyone was cool with that and unfortunately none of the people freaking out now said anything then. So one of the people in that thread did it. He's in this thread apologizing and stuff , but I don't think it's as big a deal as people are making it out to be, though.
Do people think the FOIA request is gonna like, tip the feds off that this website exists? Because I promise this will not be new information to them. They have always kept close tabs on the left. This site is public and accessible to everyone. I would hope people are not posting here thinking it’s under the radar or something…?
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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.
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.
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.
I'm still mad at you for deleting my Luigi related comment cause you misentetepted it as being pro NYPD take, but I agree with you here.
Fair enough I was dealing with a whole bunch of fires to put out all over that day srry you caught a stray.
I'm not really thaaaat mad. Now I'm not at all. Thanks for the sorry.
Oh FFS what now
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.
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Some person emailed the FBI about hexbear for a FOIA request
Chances are they were already aware of us, but also wtf who the fuck cares about us that much that they would do that. Our haters have some wild priorities.
It was me. I promise I am no hater of HB. It's an awesome site with great people. I put the request in as a response to a post asking someone to make a FOIA request.. The response then was positive. Last thing I want is to cause site drama. There's a discussion here: https://hexbear.net/comment/5784821
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I thought it was funny 
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