Not sure what will happen, but seems to be a Fediverselore event for sure
I enjoyed the community. Hope they find a new home.
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 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.
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.
Yeah but on the other hand it’ll hardly be the first time this community has moved. Looking at the frontpage of chapo.chat the userbase doesn’t seem particularly bothered by the possibility.
That isn’t ironic. That’s entirely on brand. Ironic would be if they got taken down due to leftist infigh-actually, no, that’s also on brand. I guess if Trump - no, that would also…
…Is this what they mean by “irony-poisoned”?
yep this is a downside to being on a federated server run by some rando.
Put my bid in. Man, you guys hate me now…just imagine when I own hexbear!!!
I don’t recognize your username. Why would anyone have an opinion on you?
Fair point! I have just spent all day arguing against people trying to get me banned from the fediverse. So I guess I left the blinders on.
In this very sub, there was a post yesterday: “TrumpsTruth, Conservatism, TheNewDonald, what’s happening on this instance? Is this a thing?”
And it’s around 60 comments of people telling me how much they hate me, and calling out admins to ban me! So my joke was mostly to them. And a few months before that a thread, “TrumpsTruth, Conservatism, TheNewDonald, what’s happening on this instance? Is this a thing?”
I spend so much time being yelled at that I forget that I’m actually not that well-known. It come because from comments of, “Everyone hates you!” and “Your name is everywhere.”
Good to know that it’s not everywhere. Maybe then they can shut up about how I have ruined the Fediverse and should be banned…
Thanks for calling me out. Edited.
Ah, that’s why we don’t know you. Most of us sort things in ways that show us good not bad
Yep!
Thanks, friend!
Lol
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.
care packages to families of Uyghur muslims detained in concentration camps in China.
So right to the pockets of Adrian Zenz?
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
nah they could, theyd just change it to their ip address, like the domain vendor deleted their ip address from the records when they didn’t pay
That’s not how the Fediverse works. Instances are per domain, not per IP address. You can change IPs however often you want, as long as your domain points to the right server.
It would still be a different instance behind that same domain name
That doesn’t matter to fediverse software. Any new instance on hexbear.net would have errors when trying to federate with other instances, and it probably wouldn’t be able to do so at all. But even if it did manage it, what are you expecting to do to mitigate the errors that arise from other instances referencing users/threads/posts/comments/communities/modlogs that existed on the old instance, but do not exist on the new one?
referencing users/threads/posts/comments/communities/modlogs that existed on the old instance, but do not exist on the new one
Yeah, that’s what I was talking about. It would be a different instance that doesn’t have the same database as the original one.
Honestly I’d donate. Would love to see them seethe.
I’d rather people just fund their instances or the developers
Holy smokes, that’s it after all those years.
Stop giving them attention. That’s the only thing they care about. If a tankie wants to have a ‘debate’ with you just say ‘ok’ and move on.
They have no power or any effect on anything. By making them seem bigger than they really are (some niche leftist nutjobs) you only attract new cultists looking to sate their moral superiority kink.
The bid is at $505.00!
Is Hexbear even worth that much?
The domain name isn’t worth anything, they’ve changed domain names before, they’ll do it again.
It will be funny that someone paid 500 dollars to make a communist domain redirect 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.
That genuinely would be a funny troll
Hexbear isn’t worth the dog shit I scraped off my shoe this morning.
$1921 🤯 We need a Lemmy livestream for the countdown to it settling
That would’ve been some nice funding for the instances and fediverse developers.
OMG!!!
I have more fitting memes :D
7 images
Please post them on the reaction memes community when you can, I don’t have much time to do it myself (T~T)
Will post some of them in a moment.
Fuck yeah!
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.
The current vibe definitely is “Dont pay money to cyberlandlords, give it to people in the mutual_aid comm”. Let it go and get a new domain
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.
You don’t really need to “trust” the admins if you think of your account like a throwaway.
Making some assumptions about who is who (because they’ve intentionally made it difficult to keep track for doxxing reasons), this should be the last connection they have to a previous admin team that’s been at the core of a lot of the unforced errors over the years. I think it may actually be smooth sailing after this. Either way, I have too many alts across different instances to be too worried about a single one falling. I would indeed miss Hexbear though.
what’s up with manjaro?
Don’t have a horse in the race myself (since I use arch, btw) but e.g. here is a compiled list of some past issues.
830 days since manjaro last fucked up. I’ve been using manjaro for a while. other than some hiccups i’d expect of a rolling release distro i’ve been fairly happy with it
They dont own that one either somehow lol
I think it’s hilarious that there is a bidding war that has been driving the bid up.
I’m not up to date with my Hexbear knowledge, is hexbear dead?
Hexbear is very much alive. I just visited to check, and instantly ran into some bullshit, and left again.
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.
They literally had the chance to renew at the low price and just put it off and lost contact with whoever owned the domain, for some reason they didn’t have multiple users with the login. Easy way toa void this wouldve been transferring the domain to the person hosting and paying the 12$ within the year they had to do it.
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: 2025-01-12T00:35:22ZWhere do you see this? Whois says:
- Domain: hexbear.net
- Registered On: 2021-01-12
- Expires On: 2026-01-12
- Updated On: 2025-02-11
That’s also what sav.com says under domain details “Expiration Date.”
Whois also says “client transfer prohibited.” Fucking scumbags. Don’t give them money.
Not them, but here you go
Edit: Okay, I figured it out.
NOTICE: The expiration date displayed in this record is the date the registrar's sponsorship of the domain name registration in the registry is currently set to expire. This date does not necessarily reflect the expiration date of the domain name registrant's agreement with the sponsoring registrar. Users may consult the sponsoring registrar's Whois database to view the registrar's reported date of expiration for this registration.So, as I had guessed, sav.com registered it “for them” for one year more than they actually wanted to register, and then when there was some minor billing issue, used it as an opportunity to do a cash grab. Fuck sav.com, is basically what I’m saying.
Previous comment, before the edit:
IDK what’s going on with that web site, but it’s wrong. Or, sav.com updated something to backdate the expiration or something else shady like that.
$ whois hexbear.net | head -n20 Domain Name: HEXBEAR.NET Registry Domain ID: 2584175083_DOMAIN_NET-VRSN Registrar WHOIS Server: whois-service.virtualcloud.co Registrar URL: http://sav.com/ Updated Date: 2025-02-11T17:34:08Z Creation Date: 2021-01-12T00:35:22Z Registry Expiry Date: 2026-01-12T00:35:22Z Registrar: Sav.com, LLC Registrar IANA ID: 609 Registrar Abuse Contact Email: abuse-contact@sav.com Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +1.8885808790 Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited Name Server: NS1-EXPIRED.SAV.COM Name Server: NS2-EXPIRED.SAV.COMI trust running whois more than I trust a web site. Like I say, I have no explanation why they would be wrong, but they’re wrong. Maybe sav.com registers it “on behalf of” their clients, and sets the meta-expiration one year after to give them time to fuck around with auctions? Something weird like that? And then it’s only paid until last month, and because a card had expired or something trivial like that, they decided to throw it into this auction process?
As much as I think it’s funny to make fun of Hexbear, I don’t think people should be celebrating them getting fucked over by criminals.
As much as I think it’s funny to make fun of Hexbear, I don’t think people should be celebrating them getting fucked over by criminals.Edit: They’re over on chapo.chat now, blaming the whole thing not on sav.com, or on themselves for choosing a registrar for an important server without doing due diligence, but on DNS itself and the architects of the internet. I take it back. Fuck 'em.
They are still the same
0·1 month agoWtf are you talking about??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ???
Thats one user being unhappy with how the system functions
They are clearly blaming the admin going AWOL and not paying, and themselves for not getting the domain transfered.
https://chapo.chat/c/chapotraphouse?dataType=Post&sort=TopDay
https://chapo.chat/post/4468515?sort=Top
I did see the much more reasonable post from the site admin. That one was fine, I should have made that clear. I was mocking the users of the site freaking out, to broad and sustained applause, over how DNS is a capitalist plot when it is just about the furthest thing from it that exists on the modern internet.
I also thought it was funny that they found some GNU tool that was a replacement, but then freaked out minorly because in the docs it talks about some issue related to censorship of the Chinese internet, and we are not allowed to talk about that, that is a bad thought, it’s not real it’s not real.
Also, this is absolutely true:
As an aside, this site has a way better layout and interface than all the other lemmies. Seriously the most comfortable way to browse and it even works well on mobile.
I don’t know why it hasn’t been shared, or picked up by anyone else. Lemmy.ml if nowhere else. I never really browsed Hexbear on its own instance before today. It’s a little bit garish, on purpose, but not overly much and it all fits together and looks peaceful and attractive. It is not “show me the UX equivalent of a pile of unvarnished planks” like the default theming.
Just off whois on linux, but I’m not clear why it lists two different sets of dates. I’m guessing querying the root whois vs the registrar, and hexbear is currently in the process of fixing their domain which is why one set is 2026.
~$ whois hexbear.net Domain Name: HEXBEAR.NET Registry Domain ID: 2584175083_DOMAIN_NET-VRSN Registrar WHOIS Server: whois-service.virtualcloud.co Registrar URL: http://sav.com/ Updated Date: 2025-02-11T17:34:08Z Creation Date: 2021-01-12T00:35:22Z Registry Expiry Date: 2026-01-12T00:35:22Z >>> Last update of whois database: 2025-02-11T20:42:41Z <<< *snip* Domain Name: HEXBEAR.NET Registry Domain ID: 2584175083_DOMAIN_NET-VRSN Registrar WHOIS Server: whois-service.virtualcloud.co Registrar URL: https://www.sav.com/ Updated Date: 2025-02-11T17:35:29Z Creation Date: 2021-01-12T00:35:25Z Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2025-01-12T00:35:22Z Registrar: SAV.COM, LLC *snip* >>> Last update of WHOIS database: 2025-02-11T17:35:29Z <<<Unless the +1 year date is the registrar holding it for themselves to auction off, which seems equally likely.
Unless the +1 year date is the registrar holding it for themselves to auction off, which seems equally likely.
Yeah, that’s what it is. Whois actually explained it to me, and I didn’t bother to read it the first time. I made an edit.
HOSTINGER IS LITERALLY A SCAM WHAT, known scam within the community for doing exactly what you claim sav does insane af that you would suggest that, look around reddit or lowendtalk. Actually comedy to see that suggestion under you making those claims about sav.com lol.
What on earth are you talking about?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Hostinger/top/?t=all
I see people incredibly upset about the poor customer service. That’s pretty accurate. Maybe I should not recommend them, I’ve had some similar issues but never terribly bad and I wrote it off as “jank.” That’s why it’s cheap. When did anyone say it’s a scam or they extort extra money?
They play the long game, first 3 years will prob be chill, once you’re stuck with them https://www.reddit.com/r/Domains/comments/1big23f/hostinger_domain_renewal_scamming_hostinger_is_a/
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.
You’re being downvoted for this, weird.
I hate downvotes because they are super arbitrary and oftentimes really petty. Obviously I recognise they can be useful to weed out horrible and discriminatory stuff, but often they are used as a sort of “disagree” button.
The beauty of lemmy though is can be (and am) on an instance with downvotes disabled . So have the exact same experience except only upvotes are possible.
Piefed has a great community setting feature making them a bit more reliable/useful although it doesn’t fix how people are using it:
Tankies are downvoting enmasse in this thread, especially Hexbear users on alts.
Tankies think downvoting and taking over internet forums is praxis and that “anarchkiddies” don’t read theory. Karl Marx and Stalin said take over reddit communities and downvoting is the first step of transitioning into communism.
They’ve moved to chapo.chat.
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! 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.
Ah, I saw a lot of people traumatized by their posting, but it is the first time I hear about the opposite.
Hexbear is the only place online I’ve found that I feel most comfortable speaking my mind as a neurodivergent queer communist. People act like hexbear is some harsh authoritarian zone, it just simply doesn’t condone chauvinism, transphobia, or let people post western propaganda without it being questioned. Some people react poorly to the way they are responded to on hexbear when they post some bullshit that we’ve heard and debunked 1000 times already.
They also made a habit of “raiding” other instances, and outright flooding any conversation they didn’t agree with with the most vile takes they could come up with, or, failing that, the pig shit Gif.
But yeah, they’re secretly caring people, sure.
They also made a habit of “raiding” other instances,
Lol, I love seeing the mythology of hexbear evolve in real time. I particularly like how you put “raiding” in inverted commas to make it seem like you’re quoting something, rather than just making it up whole cloth.
I mean, I saw it happen. You argue with one, and twenty others show up and just flood the thread.
But sure, keep lying to yourself about how your friends are secretly caring people or whatever.
Yes, that’s how federation works lol.
they had a genuinely traumatic experience
Jesus Christ, this is so ridiculous. They federated on their own accord, and from what I’ve seen very little non-hexbear users ever came to post on hexbear communitites. Seeing some new users in your online community who disagree with you isn’t fucking traumatic, in fact these people adore arguing and “dunking” on “libs”.
Their users wanted to defederate right away when they saw the rest of Lemmy. The people in charge (able to pull the switch) kept telling them to hold on and it’d get better. A small number of people made the decision for all of them. It’s all the rest for whom I genuinely feel bad. Their community was highjacked and, I think to them, attacked. I can have empathy for the average users.
Having seen how Hexbear interacted with other instances, I have zero empathy for them. They were an incredibly nasty group of people towards anyone who thought differently to them.
Dunking on other instances was literally the entire reason they federated in the first place. Their users were salivating at what they would do to lemmy.ca before we defed’d.
They love to paint themselves as victims.
Seeing some new users in your online community who disagree with you
It takes so very little for liberals to take their masks off and start talking word-for-word exactly the same as incel nazis.
If you see anything that’s factually incorrect in my comment, please go ahead and point it out.
How about instead of puffing your chest out like an online incel douchebag asking me to cross a brand new line in the sand, you respond to what was already pointed out.
i.e. you being an incel nazi cosplayer and pulling the ‘just simply for disagreeing and nothing else’ bullshit you and every other incel nazi uses every time your behavior is called out
what was already pointed out.
Almost nothing has been pointed out. You said my comment resembles those of “incel nazis”. No actual explanation or concrete criticism, just aggressive vocabulary and vague accusations. Of course, you can’t provide anything more than that - had i actually given even a hint of support for nazi ideology, you’d easily point it out, rather than just calling out… my wording?
bullshit you and every other incel nazi uses every time your behavior is called out
What is this “my/our behaviour” that you’re talking about exactly?
I didn’t explicitly give verbal support to specific nazi parties (motte) I just said these snowflakes go running whenever some vague and nonspecific disagreement happens! (bailey)
You can’t criticize me for using the exact same rhetorical tools literal nazis use and in the exact same context! It’s just a coincidence! You have to follow my rules and satisfy my framing!
Their community reminds me of that one Something Awful subforum with the same style. I guess hexbear is just a younger demographic
Homie, they inundated everywhere else with their bile, very few people actually came to their instance.
They were the traumatic experience.
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. 🤷♂️
Updated my blocklist, thank you
Thanks, added to the OP
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.
I dont think anyone on hexbear is actually bidding on the auction. For one most users are poor and the consensus seems to be that any money that would go to cyberlandlords would be better served in the mutual_aid comm. Like if someone wants to spend money on hexbear, they should spend it on those that need it the most.
Thats always risky and I highly doubt it, they could just not buy it and then they’re stuck holding the domain and can’t sell it for a cheaper price immediately after
