You can now check if you are banned directly with HAL

If you’d like to find out if you are banned by HAL, you can now open a private chat with @thisishalbot, and send the /check command. If you are, HAL will let you know the reason and the effective date, and will show you the message that got you banned. If your ban was issued in error, or you would otherwise like to appeal, you can do so in @halsupport.

You can also tap here to see if you are banned.

Command Removed: /deleteprivateinvitelinks

This command is no longer needed, as Chat Locks has an option to delete private invite links, and many other types of messages.

If you are currently using the feature, please use the “Private Invite Link” chat lock instead.

⧉ Learn how to use Chat Locks

Some Updates:

1. When a global ban is lifted, HAL will now lift the ban in each group where it applied it. There is no longer a need for group admins to take unbanned members off their removed users lists.

2. The antispam system can no longer be disabled. This was previously available as HAL has other features, but it is primarily an antispam system and those other features will become premium-only (HAL+) at some stage, so turning off its core feature does not make sense.

3. The /me command has been renamed back to /info.

4. Group admins can now opt out of the troll ban-list. See the Antispam section in /help for more info.

HAL will be going offline shortly for server maintenance. Downtime should only be a few minutes.

Maintenance is complete.

An attempt to fix channel banning has been deployed. Messages that are automatically forwarded from a channel to its linked discussion group should no longer be subject to filtering. If this does occur again, please let us know in @halsupport.

Additionally, the filtering mechanisms that triggered channel-bans have been adjusted – they were a little too broad, and produced a few false-positives (including the channels that should not have been checked in the first place) which have since been reversed.

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A reminder about our beta testing period:

Most online services, big and small, will go through a beta testing period before becoming generally available to the public. In the case of HAL, we are currently in a private/closed beta. Unlike a public/open beta, this means that groups need to request an invite in order to be considered and, in doing so, must be able to commit to testing the bot and providing input in the form of bug-reports and general feedback. This input is important, as the objective is to build a bot that everyone can use.

At the moment, we’re keeping this testing period private/closed so as to not inundate the process – this is a side project at the end of the day, and public testing would likely be a bit overwhelming to manage at this stage.

The current objective is to do some housekeeping and introduce some more features, such as HAL+ (premium tier, the details of which are not yet finalised), a web-based interface for managing group settings, viewing event logs, etc, before we enter a public/open beta, at which point anyone will be able to use HAL and provide feedback whilst it’s still in testing.

Then, once everything is stable in the public beta, we will plan for a General Availability (GA) release, at which point the bot will be considered stable and ready for all groups to use.

In the meantime, if you’re testing HAL in the private beta, please remember to report any issues you may find and feel free to provide feedback about your experience using it.

Telegram’s Bot servers are currently experiencing issues.

This may make HAL appear to respond or action a ban slowly, but it’s actually a delay on Telegram’s end. There’s not much we can do about this – just need to wait it out…

Update: Looks like everything’s working normally again.

Telegram’s Bot API is experiencing issues again, and so HAL may be slow to respond or may not respond at all. Will update this message when it looks like the issue is resolved.

Update: Seems to be back to normal. The API has been unstable of late, so this may happen again soon. Luckily, the problems do not affect the apps, so sending messages works normally when they happen.

Updates:

1. When HAL deletes messages in bulk as part of a ban, it will now do so in one shot.
2. In smaller groups, HAL will now do ban-checks on accounts that react to messages.
3. New chat-locks: Forward, Channel Forward, Link, Formatted Code and Story.
4. Chat-lock announcements can now be muted using the /quietlocks command.
5. Quick-reply banning has been fixed, and will now auto-escalate for a global ban.

Happy new year! 🎉

Feature update:

Comment moderation now has a strict mode, which prevents group members from sending messages that are not in channel comment threads or in reply to other messages. This is useful for channels that have discussion groups intended only for comments on channel posts, not for chit-chat or random messages.

To enable this, send /commentmoderation strict to your discussion group or directly to HAL via a connected session (see /help connections if you’re not sure how this works).

Note: if your group is not linked to a channel, then strict mode will delete any messages from non-admins that are not replies to others, which isn’t really desirable. Remember, though, that comment moderation is designed to be used in channel discussion groups.

In addition, messages that are flagged for deletion are now announced (with a reason) by default, much like chat locks. You can silence these announcements with the /quietmoderation on command.

For more details, and to see other comment moderation modes, send /help comments directly to @thisishalbot.

We’re investigating an issue that is causing HAL to respond slowly to some commands. The problem may lie with the hosting provider, and so there is not much we can do at this stage. If you notice HAL is slow to respond, please be patient. If you find it takes longer than a minute to respond, please let us know in response to this update.

Update: The hosting provider identified an issue with their infrastructure and has fixed it. HALs response-times are now returning to normal.

HAL is currently offline for server maintenance. Once complete, it will catch up on messages.
Update: Complete

Feature update:

Chat Locks: New lock types have been added: Boost Link, Paid Media, and Animated Effects. You can see all available chat locks by sending /chatlocktypes to your group or connected private chat (recommended). Toggle them using the buttons in /chatlocks.

Auto Approvals: If you have enabled join requests in your group, HAL can now auto-approve members and decline known spammers. To enable this functionality, simply give HAL the admin permission to add/invite members.

Also added to chat locks: CJK (to delete messages containing Chinese, Japanese or Korean characters) and Cyrillic (to delete messages containing characters from Slavic languages, such as Russian, Bulgarian, Ukranian, etc). Note: these locks also look at user names, just like the Right To Left lock, which covers the Arabic, Syriac and Hebrew languages.

HAL is currently down. We’re investigating and will get it back up and running as soon as possible.

The server has been restarted and HAL is currently catching up (might be slow to respond for a little while).

HAL’s database is in need of some TLC, so that’s been scheduled for tomorrow morning at ~6am UTC. Down-time won’t be long, and the bot will catch up on whatever it missed during maintenance.

Maintence is complete and HAL’s back up and running.

A reminder that the /hban command accepts a reason for applying a ban. By default, we use “Spam” as the reason, but you can change this to “Scam”, “Bot”, “Pornography”, etc, as applicable. For example, if you want to ban for a scam/crypto message, simply reply to that message with /hban scam.

You can see a list of pre-defined reasons by sending /banreasons to your chat, or in DM to HAL when you are connected to one of your groups (using /connect). You can also provide any other reason, but we generally recommend sticking to one of the pre-defined ones. We see the reason when reviewing global ban requests, so providing one can help by giving us some context.

To familiarise yourself with the different commands and features HAL offers, send /help directly to @thisishalbot and navigate through the help menu that HAL sends back.

HAL is currently unavailable due to an outage with its upstream provider. Unfortunately, there isn't much we can do at the moment, so we'll just need to wait it out. As always, the bot will catch up on anything it missed when the outage is resolved.

Updates (times UTC):
12:48 – We’re expecting an update from our provider at 13:00.
12:59 – Our provider is starting to bring services back up. We don’t know how long this might take.
14:00 – Services are starting to come back online and we are re-deploying everything on our end.

HAL is back up and running, catching up on everything missed for the last few hours.