this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2025
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Embassy of Hexbear on Lemmygrad
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Hexbear's Diplomatic Mission to Lemmygrad
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It's part of why I don't have any intention to go back, I think. Unless we can have a fully verifiable user who is fully transparent about their ownership with whoever else...that's a genuine risk. You could get more than just I.P and login info especially if anyone uses an email for recovery. If you've completely black-boxed yourself from social media that's a different story I suppose.
Also, total replacement of the admin team sounds reasonable too. On vote, of course.
I’ve used an email for recovery. What happens if I change this email…will the old one still be visible?
Not sure if there is logs for that!
Thanks.
At this point I don't intend to go back to hexbear no matter what it is called. Not because I dont love the people and the site culture but because I can't trust the admin team. I was beginning to consider going back after the "Meta open-floor" discussion but the struggles over transparency and moderation were never really resolved.
This latest event reaffirmed my decision to stay away. The "we fucked up" narrative just doesn't sit well with me. I can't accept that the Admin who originally set up the url just "forgot. You don't break up 2000 comrades meeting place unless there was some serious bad blood.
I'm pretty upset over the events that lead to me deleting my account but even then I'd gladly do more to save hexbear than the little work it would have been to transfer the DNS account... unless I had serious suspicions that the site was a threat to the comrades there.
That's exactly pretty much it. At this point, I straight up don't believe them. Do we have solid proof/evidence that is what actually happened, or did some internal struggle session happen and the "original admin" doesn't wanna talk to anyone anymore?
We wont ever know, but we can make some pretty decent assumptions off the history of the site.
Sadly domain names are a bit archaic in how they are owned and distributed.
I don't know of many systems that allow secure ownership of domains between multiple people in any way that stops a single user going AWOL if they wish. Even establishing an LLC or something to manage the domain doesn't necessarily stop someone transferring the domain or letting it expire out of spite, especially when admins would rather keep (pseudo)anonymous.
Whilst the admins did admit they should've seen the writing on the wall and started the migration earlier, there's no real way for them to force the owner to give up the domain. If anyone is truly at fault, it's the person who sat on hexbear.net and didn't make any attempt to transfer the rights despite knowing they weren't interested in actively managing the domain.
I disagree with total replacement of the admin team. Though I guess I am biased because I was one but stepped down.
If anything this should simply be a teachable moment.
There's never a lack of teachable moments, is there between the constant struggles and now this? There's a difference I think between a teachable one and a totally and completely preventable one. Agree to disagree, I suppose.
I don't really see how this was a completely preventable issue. The person who owns the domain said they would keep it up, then they didn't.
From what I was told the person was hard to get a hold of. Why didn't anyone start asking questions when that first started occuring?
If you were asking me personally it's because I don't really care. I love the people there but we have weathered worse storms in the past. All the people I care about just hang out in other spaces instead.
There is no worse storm than site admins enabling cyberattacks on comrades... not even close. This isn't "should we stack rocks"
It was preventable in the sense that the admin team probably should not have continued relying on a single point of failure who had already shown themselves to be unreliable and prone to vanishing for extended periods, but I think it's also not really a blameworthy mistake. They assumed good faith in people who had helped to set up the site and pay for the infrastructure, which is understandable. It's a learning opportunity for sure and very preventable in hindsight, but not really anybody's fault I don't think.
Sure, but without a complicated legal entity, "the person who controls the DNS" will always be a single point of failure. Questions maybe should've been asked earlier, and backups put in place, but nothing about the issue was preventable.