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this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2026
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Welcome to c/news! We aim to foster a book-club type environment for discussion and critical analysis of the news. Our policy objectives are:
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To learn about and discuss meaningful news, analysis and perspectives from around the world, with a focus on news outside the Anglosphere and beyond what is normally seen in corporate media (e.g. anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist, Marxist, Indigenous, LGBTQ, people of colour).
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To encourage community members to contribute commentary and for others to thoughtfully engage with this material.
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To support healthy and good faith discussion as comrades, sharpening our analytical skills and helping one another better understand geopolitics.
We ask community members to appreciate the uncertainty inherent in critical analysis of current events, the need to constantly learn, and take part in the community with humility. None of us are the One True Leftist, not even you, the reader.
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The Hexbear Code of Conduct and Terms of Service apply here.
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Link titles: Please use informative link titles. Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed.
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Content warnings: Posts on the newscomm and top-level replies on the newsmega should use content warnings appropriately. Please be thoughtful about wording and triggers when describing awful things in post titles.
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Fake news: No fake news posts ever, including April 1st. Deliberate fake news posting is a bannable offense. If you mistakenly post fake news the mod team may ask you to delete/modify the post or we may delete it ourselves.
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Link sources: All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. If you are citing a Twitter post as news, please include the Xcancel.com (or another Nitter instance) or at least strip out identifier information from the twitter link. There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance, such as Libredirect or archive them as you would any other reactionary source.
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Archive sites: We highly encourage use of non-paywalled archive sites (i.e. archive.is, web.archive.org, ghostarchive.org) so that links are widely accessible to the community and so that reactionary sources don’t derive data/ad revenue from Hexbear users. If you see a link without an archive link, please archive it yourself and add it to the thread, ask the OP to fix it, or report to mods. Including text of articles in threads is welcome.
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Low effort material: Avoid memes/jokes/shitposts in newscomm posts and top-level replies to the newsmega. This kind of content is OK in post replies and in newsmega sub-threads. We encourage the community to balance their contribution of low effort material with effort posts, links to real news/analysis, and meaningful engagement with material posted in the community.
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American politics: Discussion and effort posts on the (potential) material impacts of American electoral politics is welcome, but the never-ending circus of American Politics© Brought to You by Mountain Dew™ is not welcome. This refers to polling, pundit reactions, electoral horse races, rumors of who might run, etc.
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Electoralism: Please try to avoid struggle sessions about the value of voting/taking part in the electoral system in the West. c/electoralism is right over there.
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I believe we should ban everyone from social media.
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Unironically I do think we should ban algorithmic social media. Like Hexbear is fine but if content is served over an algorithm it should be banned. Go back to the days of following manually and stuff. Engagement bait dominates now and its rotting peoples brains.
Hexbear also has an algorithm. Upvotes increase visibility, age decreases visibility, posts are weighted by community size etc.
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The algorithm should be simple enough that you can write it out and look at it. Hexbears is a clear mathematical formula based on upvotes, comments, time, etc., not a black box that maximizes attention
https://github.com/hexbear-collective/lemmy/pull/6
That's the Active sort algorithm, which I restored to the original Hexbear Active sort after we merged back to upstream lemmy. See file up.sql for the actual algorithm. It's unfortunately rather difficult to read for those not technically inclined, and kinda hard to understand clearly even for those who can read it. I came to understand it by trying out some basic examples to understand how it worked.
Basically, for several hours after a post, recent comments adjust the time of the post forward to make it come off as more recent, which pushes its rank higher. Right after the post is made, a comment can adjust the post time into the future, maximizing this effect. This effect fades away after several hours, though, such that posts 8 or 9 hours old or older have trouble rising to the top of the feed when competing with newer posts.
Time traveling posts
I don't think sorting is the same as an algorithm. Hot/Top/Controversial/New/Old are specific ways of sorting things. By Algorithmic I meant where they track every click, movement, and pause to decide what to show you next.
Sorting the feed is literally what any algorithm is, choosing what content to show when. I think what you’re against is personalised algorithms, but even for algorithms that just prioritise engagement or retention, it could be argued that hexbear’s algorithm does exactly that too. Albeit, not in as sophisticated a manner as say instagrams.
OK so let me be more clear:
I am fine with being able to click a button and say "Show me the stuff with the most engagement on the entire site in the last 24 hours" or something like that. Because that is the same for everyone and is just a way to find active discussions. What I am not fine with is where everyones feed is different and determined by specific things being tracked about them. I see it as unhealthy and addictive to the users and as promoting reactionary behavior in society at large.
any social media beholden to the profit motive is going to have the same problems. that's the reason hexbear is less shit
I believe we should ban everyone
you and the other owl will work as carrier pigeons for us to post