“Link or Lib” should be site wide
this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2026
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It's a funny rule but I get sad seeing lots of people still post no link and instead just write "am lib"
Unfortunately, everyone except me is a lib.
you’re telling me this isn’t real news???
I think that we all should be more critical about social media posts and the role they play in our understanding of the world. Social media itself is not for spreading sound information or informing the masses. Just like the TV news media before it was not nor the newspapers before that. We must think structurally, systemically, and really question the value of this stuff even if it reports news we want to hear.
For a community that prides ourselves on seeing past propaganda and libshit, we would do well to hold our own information sharing to higher standards
I completely agree.
I would also add that headlines are not written by the same person as the article. I frequently see screenshots of headlines on hexbear without any link attached. The article is written by the author/writer. The headline is written by the editor. Sometimes the headline is inaccurate to the article.
Never trust or even read unaccredited screenshots of text
Yes please.
I think there should be a site wide ban on posting ~~things that seem to be news but are just random unsourced screenshots.~~
Full agreement. Good proposal
I assume I'm missing these posts or just not paying attention. I'm genuinely curious - is this happening often?
Just to back this up, as someone who has also been bothered by it, yes, it's happening a lot.
There's also just straight up fake news posted here a lot that everyone just thoughtlessly buys into, like this: https://hexbear.net/post/7283937
And there's even someone all the way at the bottom of the comments comparing it to another time they were tricked by a different bit of fake news.
That example doesn't fit my proposal because there is a source provided. Is the story factually incorrect?
I said "also". It's not supposed to be an example of that.
And yes, the headline just has no evidence of having happened, with literally no details in the "article".
the "article" looks to be some sort of live stream daily update. It says later "As of 5pm on Thursday 8 January, other sources began confirming the withdrawal of US embassy staff. In tandem, journalist Vanessa Beeley released the following news. It is currently unclear if the series of events are related or not:" [a bunch of stuff about Iran] Sometimes the news mega is like that. (To my eyes at least.)
Looking it up I found similar stories from Sept 2024 and June 2025 but everything from Jan 2026 looks like Canary is the source. I didn't thoroughly read the comments bu scrolling through couldn't find any debunking; but meme-based analysis might have gone over my head.
If someone posts a debunking of a news (or other statement of fact) it should become a pinned comment, and/or the thread is locked/deleted. Should be a note in the mod log as people who do it consistently might require sanctions.
Once I made a post of a historical factoid I heard on a podcast then like a million people replied to say it was fake. A mod deleted it before I saw all that. (Which I agreed with.) So I guess they do that sometimes under current rules.
I probably should have saved up a portfolio of evidence before making this post since I've been thinking about it for a long time. I think it is happening more than enough.
In the moment the one that prompted me to finally make it was https://hexbear.net/post/7392713 but it's also maybe questionable if it is "news". I think it is but you could argue it's more like opining or discussing. But there are lots of comments that read as though it is a presentation of fact. Is it? I don't know. I don't know where it even comes from.
I didn't mean to be accusatory. If I was, I'm sorry. I mostly just shitpost here, and I'm not really Extremely Online, so paying attention to the things that actually happen here sometimes go right over my head.
Huh? It was a perfectly reasonable question. :)
And if my example is the only one presented... then the proposal died on the floor because it would indeed be pointless. I posted this partly to know if anyone else is bothered by this or maybe it's just a pet peeve for me that I tend to notice too strongly.
Well, the final reply in that screenshot is AI just predicting what words are supposed to come next, so 99% chance it’s wrong and horribly misinterpreting the sources it cited.
yea that was a real shitty post. and not a shitpost. It's a tweet responding to an AI chat? please fucking no.