Hacker News

Show HN: Content Proof — Local SHA‑256 verification for tweets

Hacker News - Wed, 02/25/2026 - 7:49am

I built a small Chrome extension that creates cryptographic proof objects for tweets. It captures the tweet content, metadata, and timestamp, then generates a SHA‑256 hash. Everything is stored locally in the browser — no server, no cloud, no tracking.

The goal is to preserve what a tweet actually said at a specific moment, even if it’s later edited, deleted, or disputed. Screenshots are easy to fake; deterministic data + hashing is harder to argue with.

How it works

• Extracts text, author, URL, timestamp, and available metadata • Normalizes the data into a deterministic JSON structure • Computes a SHA‑256 hash • Stores everything locally • No external requests, no backend, no analytics

Why I built it

I kept seeing important tweets disappear during investigations. I wanted a lightweight, local‑only way to preserve content with enough structure that someone else could independently verify it later.

Looking for feedback on:

• Whether SHA‑256 is sufficient for long‑term verification • Better ways to structure the proof object for interoperability • Any privacy pitfalls I might be missing • Other use cases where this approach would be useful

Happy to answer questions. The extension is intentionally minimal — I’m trying to understand whether this approach is useful beyond my own workflow.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47150837

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