hexbear.net is on sale for auction

Oh wow, this post reminded me to renew some domains I use.

who needs the CIA infiltration manual when tankies will do it to themselves?

Hexbear isn't worth dogshit but if someone wants to waste their money, then i wont stop them

If I had the money I'd buy it and replace every post with goatse.
- Maybe not goatse, but if i were rich i'd just redirect it to world lmfao

Is there a remind me bot on Lemmy? Asking for a friend that might do something financially irresponsibly hilarious at last second if the auction values doesn't go much higher.

Every second bid is J_S. Wonder how high they'll go

I kinda wanna bid them up, but I am the broke and don't want to spend unnecessary moneys right now

The rest of the Fediverse should put together a GoFundMe to buy the domain, and stick up a page with links to donate drones to Ukrainian soldiers, and care packages to families of Uyghur muslims detained in concentration camps in China.

Couldn't somebody buy it and change it to force all the assholes out and then change things to make it a proper instance?
- Idk how federation works, but I imagine the domain name isn't the only thing that ties the instanses together together?
  
  I could be wrong

Just add the following line to your host file and add an override to your DNS:

37.187.73.130 hexbear.net

Problem solved, this is how we did it in 1985.

I prefer:

0.0.0.0 hexbear.net
- Found their missing admin!
I've done that as late as the 2010's, but I am old timey
~~so that IP resolves to https://chapo.chat/ but it uses the Hexbear.net's resources?~~

oh now I understand...
- yes that is the mirror hostname basically (they already had in the past as well).
  
  But I'm now for example able to just visit: https://hexbear.net/communities. And yes I do believe we just reach the same server actually (more or less, maybe kept in sync manually).

This almost certainly won't kill the Hexbear community, and frankly I don't think there's any way they will choose to pony up the auction money. This community has moved from reddit to discord to the fediverse and they'll probably just be on their backup/original domain chapo.chat for a month or two before switching over to whatever the admins decide to switch to, and then it will be business as usual under a new name.

Still there's a lesson here about setting up a durable online community - don't let someone control the domain registration with their personal account, you're just asking for something like this to happen. If they don't have one already the admins should set up some kind of organization that can "own" the new domain, donations, etc so that this can't happen again.

I just don't get how you could keep trusting the people that run the instance after this. Its like the whole manjaro thing I could never use it because I do not trust the people in charge because they won't stop fucking up.

The bid is at $505.00!
- Is Hexbear even worth that much?

They've moved to chapo.chat.

Here's their statement.

How does anyone know that this is a fair auction. As much as the users may be hated or disliked, I still don't believe in companies or corporations taking advantage of people like this to make a cheap buck.

Who's to say that every bid in the auction is being artificially raised by a company rep and no matter what amount anyone comes up with, the owner will just keep raising it until they find a really high value.

Shitty situation all around and as much as they are not liked, I wouldn't want anything like this happening to any honest instance out there.
According to that statement they don't have access to the account to renew that one either, so they'll lose it eventually and it should be considered temporary. 🤷‍♂️
Thanks! Unlike a lot of Lemmy users, I have a soft spot for hexbears. I think they had a genuinely traumatic experience when they federated and their very personal instance was inundated with people who didn't think and talk as they did. I'm glad they're ok.
- Their community reminds me of that one Something Awful subforum with the same style. I guess hexbear is just a younger demographic
They didn't really move. That hostname has been a synonym for hexbear.net all along. It may have been the instance's original hostname.
Thanks, added to the OP

Popcorn! Get'cher popcorn here! Can't have a good fedidrama without that delicious buttery popcorn!

I'll have a large with extra salt, please.

Oh, hell, and some milk duds too, it's gonna be a good show.
Don't forget all the sparkling water provided by the colourful users of hexbear.

Sad but kinda hilarious. Lemmy.ca appears to have a better succession plan in place through the nonprofit organization...

Bidding ends in 9 days.

Edit: Current bid is up to ~~$305~~ $505

To the moon. Still 9 days to go, now $676
As @[email protected] mentioned it's now at $505.

What's up with j_s_0e6b87? (Let's call them JS). If they really want the address that's the wrong way to go - bidding too high, too early, too often, and in a bidding war against everyone else. A better approach is to wait until the last hours and then try to snip it.

Unless their goal is to raise the prices this way?

EDIT: currently $676. JS is in a bid war with TB (t_b_2a08d7), a newcomer. 🍿
- Wouldn't it be better to agree whatever bit yall want to do with the domain name and spend the money on something more productive? Here's a father trying to buy his kid a new leg after Israel blew it off.
  
  I speak for all of hexbear when I say the domain isn't worth that much, and losing it to capitalism is a funny bit, redirect it to /r/neoliberal or the wikipedia article on economics or the Black Book of Communism or something. Maybe declare Juan Guaidó the interim president of hexbear and redirect to his twitter.
  
  Losing it to some anticommunist "left" weirdo to flex how much money they are willing to waste on an internet grudge instead of helping literally anyone is less funny.
Can you share a link to the auction?
- It's in the post's body.
Now I wanna raise a bunch of money to buy it and use it as a good way to document shitty behavior on the internet.
That's going to be crazy

They'll probably stay in chapo.chat, and instance owners will update their blocked lists. A few users lost because they can't be arsed to re-register, instead using .ml. But, past that, not much is going to change, I think.

I'm mildly curious on what's going to happen with their older domain - or, what the winning bidder will make out of it. (Document bad online behaviour? Make it about NATO to rub salt on their wounds? What else?)

Except they already said that the same issue will occur with the backup name as well. Unless the additional time allows the original owner to finally reregister it this time, as they (reportedly) claimed to be ready to do for the main one as well. I think they don't trust them anymore:-).

So everyone might move, then have to move again a second time. Not joking btw!:-)

Is it weird that I feel bad for them? Whoever is to blame, a lot of the users are innocent of this. And are also trolls, true, but even so... It would be nice if some people would learn from this that online trolling is one thing, but eventually it's even better to wake up and live in the real world. I want that for them.
- I think that the additional time will be enough to let them contact the original owner. But dunno, there might be some drama involved, IIRC not even the original devs want much to do with HB.
  
  And even if they move twice, the userbase seems close-knit enough to follow without too many losses.
  
  Is it weird that I feel bad for them?
  
  I don't think it is. The main problem there seems to be users going rogue outside their home instance; I remember HB had some rule like "respect rules of the other instances you interact with", but it was toilet paper. However plenty of the other users are completely OK.
  
  Another issue is that there is some red scare against them. And even if they use it to shield themselves from actual criticism in a really dumb way, the red scare is still there.
Has chapo chat been federated with us this entire time? I'm just trying to understand what it actually is.
- It was the original website people from /r/chapotraphouse migrated to when it was banned on reddit but then everyone decided they didn't even really like the podcast and made a new thing

Wow, that's a fuck up of monumental proportions. Still 9 days left on the auction, I wonder how much it'll ultimately sell for.

This could be really annoying when they all make accounts on lemmy.ml. Funnily enough, having them sequestered over there and defederated from the rest of us has been working pretty well lately. Moderators and admins better start dusting off the banhammers.

It would probably be easier for them to keep chapo.chat. Should they massively move to lemmy.ml and recreate their communities there, I guess a lot of instances would start to defederate lemmy.ml
- Reading through the admin’s post it looks like they have the exact same issue with chapo.chat being registered by an admin who is no longer active and not responding to the rest of the admin team. They explicitly say to view the move to chapo.chat as temporary unless they can get control of that domain.
  
  Sounds like a good lesson for them and many other fediverse instances to form some sort of non-profit/club/organization legal entity and better ensure that these critical items are open to multiple individuals to reduce the bus factor. I would assume having a legal entity would make it easier to get donations to cover costs too.
- What is chapo.chat? I can see that it runs Lemmy 0.19.8 but is it just not federated or something?

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well I'm impressed that just defederating from them was enough to basically kill the site.

I thought were defederated most of their existence though? I wonder what changed.
- not everyone was, our instance held out as long as possible because were very pro free speech.

Wait, what??? Isn’t this a hugely active instance? What happened?

https://lemmy.ca/comment/14489378

Apparently they didn't pay for their registration renewal. Watch out for a flood of displaced tankies, you can usually find them by saying fuck Putin, or fuck Xinnie the pooh, and they'll just put themselves so you can block them.
- Paid registration renewal is inherently capitalist, you deranged westoid.
  
  spoiler
  
  How'd I do?
- Damn, in the comments people are suggesting switching to domains like tankie.cn or tankie.su ?
  
  They are really trying to positively reclaim the word tankie aren’t they?
- or just look for their obnoxious emojis, which are full color photos of some gross asshole.
  
  Im honestly annoyed by this as I have over 30 communities on hexbear blocked. id really not like to have to do it again
- Im assuming the war in ukraine and sanctions slowed down their flow of capital. Moneys probably been diverted to their top tier podcasters and youtubers who actually have an audience. Daddy expects results.

I've had that happen to some URLs I own before. Basically, they forgot to renew. Normally you get a grace period but some sketchy domain admins take the lapse as an opportunity to auction off what was originally a worthless address now that it has value.

Looks like it expired last month so they had a 1 month grace period
- I am willing to bet that the contact person is either gone or not checking email. It wouldn't surprise me if they lost access to the portal.
  
  Ironic that it's capitalism that's going to take down Hexbear.
- I found some people alleging the sav.com is sketchy about other aspects of their service. It wouldn't surprise me if they tactically overreacted to a single missed email, or a single expired credit card, or something like that, to squeeze their client for more money.

don't think I'd give you a dollar for that even if it was signed by Kenny loggins.

Danger Zone!
- Hey, what the shit, Loggins!?

Holy smokes, that’s it after all those years.

Weird, www.hexbear.net redirects to chapo.chat while hexbear.net doesn't.

DNS caching at play. The registrar has pointed it to their own nameservers, and that gets cached in lots of places.
- Ooooh. That explains it. Yeah, it just switched over to the redirect to sav.com for me.
  
  I think they're fucked. Because of how Lemmy does federation, there's no way that I know of to switch the domain for an existing instance without changing the name and making everyone resubscribe to everything. Although, they probably talk mostly to one another so they could probably change the name to hexbear.social or something with just a little temporary disruption if they don't feel like coming up with $300. Personally, I definitely wouldn't want to cooperate with the domain extortion, I'd rather change domains.
How doesn't that break federation? Or are they starting over?
I just clicked the first link, still the same auction site for me
- I don't see the auction site at all. Must be DNS things.
- mhm for me both links go to the lemmy instance.
For me, both redirect to chapo.
With different messages on top that aren't friendly to hexbear.
WTF is going on here?

I'm not up to date with my Hexbear knowledge, is hexbear dead?

Hexbear (edit: ~~is very much alive~~) was very much alive until my cached DNS values dropped out, and now they're dead. Looks like they're fucked.

It looks to me like sav.com is some kind of domain name scammer. They trick people into registering their domains with them by offering low prices, and then some time later once you've come to depend on the domain, proceed to some kind of abusive process like this where they'll let totally separate people (allegedly-real separate people) "bid" on your domain, and force you to pay whatever exceeds the highest bid, if you want to keep control of it. I honestly don't know how it is allowed.

It looks to me like Hexbear got suckered into registering with them, displaying the same savvy critical thinking skills that serve them so well in so many other areas. I don't think the domain expires until a year from now? Am I misunderstanding, or is sav.com just getting the jump on extorting some money from Hexbear? I realize it would be funny to jump in and bid the price up, but be aware that (1) you are giving money to some genuinely godawful people, quite a bit worse than just a bunch of confused aggressive pro-left people, if you win (2) you won't even get your entertainment until a year from now, unless I am misunderstanding something.

Edit: If anyone's curious, Hostinger has extremely cheap domain registrations: https://www.hostinger.com/domain-name-search

They also have an endearingly janky AI assistant that likes to pop up the most hilariously wrong AI descriptions of whatever domain you are registering, for no reason at all. It goes with the rest of their endearingly janky hosting service. I honestly don't mind it, I like them.

Edit: Guys, I am sad to report that they fixed the AI assistant. It now (still for no reason) displays back to you a summary of what you want to use your domain for, but they've fixed the AI involved so that it no longer gives suggestions that are hilariously wrong. It's just accurate and boring. I wish I had saved some of the ones it showed me way back when they first introduced it, because they were wonderful.
- Their domain expired a month ago, this is pretty normal for a registrar to do with expired domains.
  
  Updated Date: 2025-02-11T17:35:29Z Creation Date: 2021-01-12T00:35:25Z Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2025-01-12T00:35:22Z
They probably survive, but they will basically be switching infrastructure and losing all sorts of shit, so their size will be much smaller and weaker.

They noticed https://hexbear.net/post/4468531

Link doesn't work given the domain.
- True, this is the new domain https://chapo.chat/post/4468531

What was the problem with Hexbear again?

Their users are needlessly hostile towards anyone who disagrees with them, they had a bug that caused their emotes to become oversized on Lemmy which quickly flooded threads when their users spam them, and they have a reputation for brigading threads to "dunk" on people. They also really like to flood threads with graphic images of pigs shitting on their own testicles, because that's definitely what normal people do.

It's worth noting that they don't federate with other instances to participate in good faith, they do so in order to dunk on people and "dismantle Western propaganda" and "plant the beans of truth in other instances fields" and in general act in bad faith. Worse, their instance admins did little to stop this.

They were defederated from many instances for good reason, as their behaviour drove away a lot of new users. A lot of Hexbear users have alts on lemmy.ml and midwest.social, so the defederation doesn't stop their users from continuing to be dickheads.

And if you'd like some receipts, I have plenty of examples. Best viewed from an instance that federates with Hexbear, so you can see their behaviour for yourself.

https://lemmy.ca/post/3326347 https://lemm.ee/post/4543536 https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/2017079 https://lemmy.world/post/2498330
Have you ever been around a child who gets some silly factoid in their head, but it's completely wrong because children are still learning the very basics of synthesizing the observable world into coherent ideas?

Hexbears are like children who have spent the last six hours explaining to you over and over again that cows can breathe under water.
Most of them are tankies (dumb political ideology) but most people took issue with the fact that they were the most annoying people on Lemmy. Every thread they'd be in would be a collection of the worst takes imaginable and they liked to start arguments with everyone else
- Let's also not forget their emoji spamming either. They absolutely trashed many threads on servers federated with them.
- "tankies" is not an ideology. It's a perjorative term for anyone to the left of you.

I’m bidding. Fuck them.

How's your bid going? Top is $676 now. I wonder if it'll go to ,$1000. I wonder how many of the bidders are from hexbear, trying to save it
- I wonder how many of the bidders are from hexbear, trying to save it
  
  Anyone who did that would be endlessly mocked for giving a thousand dollars to a domain registrar instead of literally anything else.
spending hundreds of dollars on a domain to own the commies, that's so epic chungus, take my updoot good sir
Rent free.

If you go to their megathread on the topic you'll see that not only are they not bidding, they're telling people not to bid on their behalf and go to their https://chapo.chat/c/mutual_aid comm and give the money to someone who needs it. So if you have 300+ bucks to set on fire please consider helping someone with their rent or groceries. Or on the kid from Gaza trying to raise money for a prosthetic leg. You'll feel better than spending it on spite.