hexbear

Hi folx Not much has changed since we last brought this up half a year ago, which is probably a mistake as link trackers have become more ubiquitous, and the corporations that know our names and addresses have built up shadow profiles on us, but better late than never. # Anyway, cutting to the chase. This bot will warn you in DMs when you share a tracking link. That's it. Post over. Read on if you want to see my unhinged tracking link rants. ::: spoiler **What *are* link trackers?** When you share a youtube link you may notice an ?si=(random gibberish) at the end. You may notice the same with Instagram, except here it's ?igshid. On Twitter, it's ?t. On TikTok and Reddit you have urls that end in gibberish like vm.tiktok․com/blahblah or reddit․com/r/blahblah/s/blahblah. These URLs are artisanal. They are made only for you. Other site's URLs can also be called "high entropy" URLs, for example, they may contain the time down to the millisecond, in one case. When you share these URLs to the world wide web, you broadcast to this service (to YouTube, to Google, to TikTok, to Reddit etc.) that "Hey! This previously-anonymous account is actually me!". When you share this link to your friend halfway across the world who only talks to you on Discord, and they click it, you broadcast to this service that actually you two are buddies. Same here on Hexbear. This sharing helps these sites build a social graph on us. The threat is two-fold. Google has a powerful search crawler, and also runs a massive ad network. They could sift through the pages they indexed on Hexbear and link the exact Hexbear account to your real name. People who have clicked on your shared link will also be exposed as having been on that exact page to which you shared the link. This kind of metadata leak can be dangerous, as law enforcement has previously asked Google to reveal people who watched so-and-so YouTube video at so-and-so time. This bot also handles TikTok, Yandex, Snapchat, Meta/Facebook trackers that all have this same ad-related threat. ::: ::: spoiler **What can mods on Hexbear do?** If you're a mod and you think this is important, you can @ mention this bot on a community you moderate. The bot should reply to you with some cringe, and then you can appoint it as a mod. When given mod powers, it will remove any comment/post that contains tracking links if the user has not fixed it after a day. I will probably add functionality to sift through old comments that have dangerous trackers (like TikTok, which exposes your name and picture to anyone who clicks it) and remove/report them soon. ::: ::: spoiler **How to protect yourself on other sites and on your phone** Install the [ClearUrls extension](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls/) on desktop (if you're on Chrome... please switch, that is another privacy issue entirely). ClearUrls will cut down on most of your worries. Be on the lookout for the high-entropy parameters when you share things on your phone as well. Parameters in the url that look like ?si=blahblah, ?igshid, which look like they'd stand for "share ID" or "Instagram share ID", as well as obfuscated TikTok links like vm.tiktok․com/blahblah will all track you and your social circle. ::: ::: spoiler **How to protect your identity from leakage if you accidentally click on a tracking URL** If you're browsing a sensitive website, like Hexbear, and you happen to click a tracking URL that goes to YouTube, Google/YouTube can correlate your click with the appearance of this URL on Hexbear, associating your identity with this site. To avoid this, you may use [Firefox Multi-Account Containers](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/), and make Hexbear use its own container that you keep separate from everything else. Although this solution is not perfect, it will prevent one facet of your identity leaking and make it harder for other sites to correlate your digital footprint. ::: ::: spoiler **What other threats exist hidden in URLs** The biggest threat is TikTok, which basically doxxes you when you share a link with someone. When someone clicks your TikTok link, a big banner on top of their screen shows your profile picture and your name. If you used your real name and picture... well. Uh-oh. Other "light doxxing hazards" exist on other sites. After looking through Hexbear comments using the search function, you can find comments that link to *****, comments that link to ****, etc. that may include the user's general location down to the city, their preferred language, their screen width and height (in the URL!!! for some reason???), and some very high-entropy parameters that look like a long string of gibberish. If I sat down today and looking to dox someone by looking at their profile and they shared links willy-nilly, I'd have some pretty good leads. ::: ::: spoiler **What can the maintainer of HexReplyBot do?** HexReplyBot does not handle YouTube tracking parameters properly. The maintainer can check [this](http://regexr.com/842t2) RegExr post I made with the modified regex. I bodged it real quick, but it should remove the ?si at least. It will still keep the ?pp parameter, but I got lazy and it's not as common. Please consider changing the regex out, thank you. ::: ::: spoiler Some links https://archive.ph/8c80m - law enforcement using metadata provided by YouTube to find the real name of a suspect https://hexbear.net/comment/4439859 - someone mentioning that they keep getting a Hexbear user recommended to them on TikTok because they clicked that user's TikTok link months ago https://archive.is/WD7ke - "We kill people based on metadata" Can't be bothered to find it but ross ulbricht got busted on some metadata links between his email and stackoverflow. Now imagine if they had tracking links back then to triangulate his stackoverflow identity (which now has tracking links) with some other offsite identity. ::: Share any feedback or thoughts, I'll take it into consideration.

My answer: When chapotraphouse was banned on reddit many mods and users came together to create a space on a link aggregator platform. Choosing lemmy the original admin and developer team decided to fork it for various reasons. About a year ago, sustained effort was taken to upstream many of the forked features so that we could rebase with current version lemmy and federate. Over the years hexbear has become a non-sectarian social media space for sharing news, memes, links, posts and comments with each other as the mods endeavour to make the space welcoming to marginalized people. [Terms of Service](https://hexbear.net/tos) | [Code of Conduct](https://hexbear.net/code_of_conduct) | [Modlog](https://hexbear.net/modlog) | [Allow-list](https://hexbear.net/instances) | [PPB](https://hexbear.net/PPB)

Please include a brief description of the nominated instance, why it should be removed from the allow-list or added to the block-list, and include a link to the instance. Off-topic comments will be removed. If an instance is already nominated please do not create another top-level comment, reply to that other nomination with your comment and upvote to show your desire to defederate. Multiple top-level comments for the same instance nomination will be removed

Please include a brief description of the nominated instance, why it should be added to the allow-list, and include a link to the instance. Off-topic comments will be removed.

I, being used to my password manager doing everything, failed to save my password when I made my Hexbear account. The application has since been accepted, but when I try to reset the password the bear icon spins for a while before resetting to the reset password button. I have tried multiple browsers and devices. I assume this is because I've never logged in to the account and that's why it doesn't want to work. Can anything be done?

modlog link (CW for misogyny and transphobia): https://hexbear.net/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&userId=2019549 sorry to be an armchair admin but noticed this user around today. took a look at their modlog and noticed they have a previous siteban and today had posts removed for overt misogyny and transphobia (the transphobia was a necro of a year-old bookclub thread about Feinberg... bizarre). anyway, i noticed they've only received a 2-day ban just from the CTH comm. i guess this is in line with the new policies around combating misogyny, but imo this should be a pretty clear cut case for a perma site ban. user from another instance with a previous ban, pops up today and starts posting vile misogyny and seeking out old posts to do transphobia on. why give them a third chance?

Hey sorry if this info is posted somewhere or if this is the wrong place to ask this. I don't have a hexbear account but I pretty much spend all my time here. I told my partner they should sign up for an account on hexbear, and they were just curious how long it takes to be approved 👀

I was joke banned from chapotraphouse comm recently (which was funny and I am not upset about in any capacity) and today I went looking to make a post and realized it wasn't in my feed. Lo and behold the joke temp ban actually unsubbed me from the comm. Easy fix but I didn't notice and it doesn't really tell you. Anyway if anyone gets joke banned or temp banned from a comm just remember to resub when your ban is up so you can resume lurking and posting. I did not know it worked this way so figured others should know too.

example: selecting "kelly" is a needless chore, because you have to sift through a bunch of kelly emojis to find the one named kelly. similar things happen with "slammer" and several others. the canonical name of an emoji should always have precedence over keywords in the picker

can anyone else verify

This would fall under all pr is good pr right? Cant click on it and its sooo frustrating

The emoji picker is incredibly slow for me when it comes to previews. Can I cache all the emojis so it becomes useable?

Anyone have suggestions for a good mobile Lemmy app? Or do people generally just use their browser? I'm using boost right now and its fine except that it shows usernames instead of display names so I can't see anyone's pronouns

Hello users of hexbear, we have started discussions with an admin of lemmy.ca regarding potential refederation. Lemmy.ca had added hexbear to their blocklist about a year ago: https://lemmy.ca/post/3326347 With the recent changes in lemmy features as well as a maturing fediverse the mods/admins of hexbear and lemmy.ca are open to trying again, but before we put lemmy.ca on our allow-list we wanted to open up discussion and voting to the users of hexbear. This vote *will* be binding with regard to adding lemmy.ca to our allow-list. In addition, the idea of including sh.itjust.works in this discussion was raised but was voted down by a majority of mods from inclusion. https://lemmy.ca/c/canada and https://lemmy.ca/c/pcgaming are the instance's top two communities but there are a few other small, niche communities. A community that may be removed from hexbear is the https://lemmy.ca/c/fediverselore so please indicate your opinion on this community if you have one. As usual please use  if you would like lemmy.ca to be added to our allow-list  if you would like lemmy.ca to *not* be added to our allow-list We will leave this post unlocked for a few days before making the decision, thank you. Users may also use this post for a general discussion on federation including naming instances for federation/defederation or feedback for the hexbear admin/mod team.

I noticed while creating a new post that if I provide a Thumbnail URL with an external (not hexbear.net) URL, then the original image gets used when viewing the post. I first noticed it on [this post](https://hexbear.net/post/3239878) where I added a youtube thumbnail icon (check it in the browser console). I tried researching if there's a bug for this in upstream Lemmy: This one seems like it would have fixed it: [LemmyNet/lemmy-ui: Update post listing to prefer local image when available](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/pull/1858) And see also this: [LemmyNet/lemmy: Add initial skeleton of image proxy improvements for feedback](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/3550) Unfortunately I'm not that familiar with the Lemmy codebase, but how possible would it be to proxy+cache thumbnails? I don't quite mean store it permanently in the database, just proxy the source image and cache it for performance reasons. Otherwise, maybe we should disable the thumbnail URL for now until this support is added upstream?

Take for example [my banner image.](https://hexbear.net/u/ashinadash) On mobile you can see Isabelline standing at the opening of whatever the fuck that is, looks great. Roughly a 16:9 window, maybe 1.85: On desktop she is cut out  scope asspect ratio looks awful. Mods pls 

502 errors, 502 errors everywhere 

I understand that the beautiful french Sandy Bridge hexbear server is very busy and hexbear does not want spam. But I gotta post!!! It's just my inbox hexbear, promise I am not doing spam... I just gotta reply to 40+ messages...

I think it would be really really really really funny

[Canvas is starting in 4 days from time of post on the 12th of July.](https://canvas.fediverse.events/) [looks like they did it last year, too (see thumbnail).](https://toast.ooo/post/288913) i can't find any discussion on it on Hexbear, so i'm assuming this hasn't been properly discussed before. i think it would be really cool imo and [we could do what was happening on PixelCanvas but w/ more Hexbear stuff ig](https://hexbear.net/post/18768)

It would be like the dunk tank but without rule 8. People don't have to subscribe to it. I will continue not posting to it, but you can feel free to make me a mod. I will be there like an absent father. Also I don't really know where this post should go, I guess we got rid of the user union at some point.

I just went to enable them only to realize they've been enabled this whole time. I only recently got email working on my website after six months of troubleshooting, so I know the struggle. Do they work on lemmy-ui?

The bot creation for Lemmy seems easy. I just dont know how to proceed from there.

This is clearly the superior way to post

 1. Can this use a fixed-width font? Currently, the timestamp jumps up and down a line depending on the combination of numbers. 2. Can the date be formatted as yyyy-MM-dd or dd.MM.yyyy? The current format of MM/dd/yyyy is reminding me of America and I don't like it

I found this website that is a leftist alternative to YouTube but has a separate community instead of just reuploading YouTube videos without ads or tracking like the websites in the Tankie Reply Bot on Lemmygrad.

Hi, my name is Kody and I am extremely new to being homeless. My food stamps have run out and I don't get more for another week or so. I was wondering if anyone could possibly PLEASE HELP me out with a little bit of relief cash so that I can feed myself. I assure you that I really do in fact need help with food. I promise that every cent will be used for food and only food. Just to be completely honest, I am a recovering alcoholic for 4 years now and I am clean and sober off of opiates for two years. I've recently been through an unfortunate string of events that has through no fault of my own landed me homeless. I just need a hand up. So please, if anyone can help just a little bit with a few dollars then I would be forever grateful. My cash app cash tag is KodyMartinGerba. Thank you

idk how this would even work but there should be a little button where i can click a little picture of Sartre and it posts the entire "absurdism of the antisemite" quote. Or the "America is a one party state with 2 parties" or anything john brown ever said

There's something about learning loads of useless trivia that draws people, and TIL is really popular. Not only that, but TIL is an organic way to educate people, even on the most commonest of things. The reactionary-TIL has posts like "TIL about the tank man who resisted tanks with his bodie" and "TIL about stalins big spoon" resurfacing every few months, which serves to teach newcomers the lore of the liberal world, and the creation of its based counterpart here would teach the vibes-based ML worldview instead. may haps i will request it... later

Put your dukes up, let's go.

In my inbox 1. I marked everything as "read". 2. I went to "All" and I can't upvote or comment. Clicking on the upvote or reply icon just makes them shake. But if I open a reply in a new tab - everything is normal. I can upvote and reply. \--- **Edit** Clearing my cache solved the problem.

db0 and Unruffled have both been banned for reactionary behavior and, in the case of the former, DM harassment. Due to these irreconcilable differences we thought it only right to allow the community to weigh in on defederating immediately.  According to this person "tankie" is anyone that criticizes the privilege of white westerners in the imperial core who have been privileged and comfortable their entire lives off of the backs of colonized people. Further context can be found in this thread https://hexbear.net/post/2484423 As always, use  to vote for federation and  to vote for defederation.

We got active, new, hot, controversial (which is useless because theres no downvote button why not BOGO?

A not real thing people believe is real, seem likes a meme to me.

I had a post removed today for using the word "spook" in reference to government agents, a common usage that I see around the site, because it is a racial slur, although ive never seen it used with that intent (not that it matters), and it only gets removed maybe 10% of the time. In order to be consistent and not offend any comrades I would propose adding it to the word filter so its removal will be uniform and not open to mod interpretation.

How can I share an archived version of a WSJ journal article? I think the site is actively blocking archive sites but I'm not a tech person so I have no idea if that's true or not. Example link - https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/tesla-stock-fans-not-selling-f45fec37 None of the archive sites listed under "url" work. After the page is saved... - At archive.today - loading icon - At ghostarchive.org - "Archiving error" - At archive.org - It saved the paywalled version of the page.