Agreed!

Please take a moment to recognise that FOIA requests are issued by journalists, weirdos and random youtubers who think they’re breaking a story, all the time, pursuing random bullshit that leads nowhere.

Further reflect on the Snowden leaks and the much higher probability that the most vulnerable users here are probably outside of the imperial core. I’m thinking mainly people living under parallel surveillance due to local action in places where the cops don’t fuck around and use nation-state scale contracting agencies do their data work for them.

Also consider smaller five-eyes nations known to trade and share in mass surveillance efforts, many of whom have domestic political toy issues and more investment in surveillance than their material threats would warrant. Many users from these nations have to consider whether their local federal intelligence agency is feeding hexbear through a heuristic search system looking for someone to make an example out of to win an election.

And consider that none of this is a real threat if you are not actually doing anything. Which none of us are. We are all shitposting about the news and learning (mostly through osmosis, tbh) about economic theory.

Finally consider that you declared yourself “not an opsec guy” so if you mean you don’t know about or practice good opsec hygiene and threat modelling etc, then let me reassure you that this is really like, not actually a major fuckup that puts hexbear at great risk, without some incredibly coincidental bad luck in the mix.

If you mean “I am not the one to harp on about opsec like a bore” then I respect your restraint, but you could do an effortpost to help educate people to be wiser about how they use the site, the risks using a site like this poses, how to accurately assess the risk and whether defensive steps need to be taken and if so how far down the rabbit hole they’d need to go to continue posting here.

Otherwise you ARE being that opsec guy and in my estimate, are overreacting to a funny blunder.

I am comfortable telling you, truthfully, that I shitpost about assassinating CEOs, live in one of what I consider, the riskier parts of the world to make “terroristic threat” jokes on the internet as far as getting to be left alone by our feds and that I do it all from my home IP address. I’m engaging in classic social media fed-baiting when I do this. I have nothing to hide, I’m squeaky clean and just curious to see if I ever get a knock on the door and a boring interview.

Maybe you see it differently, but please ease up. I really don’t think this is grounds for moderator intervention except to move the whole fuckin thread to c/badposting. Casting aspersions on the mod team’s reaction or rhetorically forcing them to make a decision in line with your ban request, is over the top.

So, I think, is going in on the poster who has pretty much humiliated themself at this point without guile or smug defense of their actions, unmasked their HB account and has otherwise acted in accordance with the actions of someone who made a reasonably harmless (or actually kind of hilarious) “misstep” according to any reasonable opsec analysis of the situation.

I could write an expose on HB tomorrow and send it to a news site and draw more attention than this did. We’re federated for fuck sake.

Sorry. I hate that I’m sounding heated at this point because we had a great exchange in another thread yesterday and I enjoy your posts which is the most honest and least weird way to express the sentiment of “I like this person in the community” I can think of in this sort of community.

I’m just trying to mediate with my perspective as a “reality check” (that vibes ableist and/or condescending but I don’t know a better turn of phrase, not intended, I apologise if this is offensive) here and hopefully turn the heat down a little.

So its “probably fine and harmless”, but worse than celebrating a dude who believes in phrenology?