A post from 2 months ago which explained the context: https://lemmy.world/post/20694710
I just had a look, nothing has changed, the website is still using Lemmy’s content to pretend to be active
Hello Blaze,
One request, whenever you post about clubsall, can you please tag me so I can also participate? Thank you.
As for this discussion, when we had a discussion last time on reddit, I thought we agreed that as long as there is not meaningful traffic, it should be ok. I guess you were not fully onboard with this.
My request with all admins is - can we agree on some rules. If we block all new sites on hunch or rules as we make up, it will kill anyone trying to do something new.
There was another thread (that I cannot find now) where some rules were proposed. (If someone can find, please reply to this).
There are 2 things being discussed
- federating out
- open sourcing clubsall
I can give an update on both of these. As I mentioned previously, someone was helping me in doing some audit, implementing federation and then we could also open source. We were going to use “sublinks”, which would do a number of upgrades. So that seems the right choice moving forward. It will allow self hosting, federation, move to postgres, move to docker etc.
However during implementation we found that sublinks itself does not implement federation out. So we were blocked by that. I checked with developer just few days ago and I was told that since all developers are volunteers and they got busy, federation was delayed. The work will pickup again in new year.
I am not sure when they will be able to finish federation. I can quickly move there once done. However that seems months away.
In the meantime, can we have a discussion about a set of rules for clarification and fairness?
One request, whenever you post about clubsall, can you please tag me so I can also participate? Thank you.
Sure, I’ll make sure to keep you tagged. I was not sure you were using your Lemmy account, so that’s why I did not tag you in this post.
as long as there is not meaningful traffic, it should be ok
You are channeling the traffic from 44k monthly active users to your website without giving credit to the instances where the content is created.
I just checked, the homepage of Clubsall shows content from !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone, while lemmy.blahaj.zone have you defederated: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/instances, as “clubsall.com” is in the blocked instances.
But if we look at the linked instances, there is now “api.clubsall.com” and “clubsall-api4.renchesterjramos.workers.dev”
If we block all new sites on hunch or rules as we make up, it will kill anyone trying to do something new.
Everyone here is trying to make a new platform. Every Lemmy server, as well as Mbin or Piefed, federate content both ways, and allow to go to the original posts from the federated copies.
In the meantime, can we have a discussion about a set of rules for clarification and fairness?
Every admin make their own rules. Feel free to convince them, a few of them are in this thread.
I just checked, the homepage of Clubsall shows content from !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone, while lemmy.blahaj.zone have you defederated: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/instances, as “clubsall.com” is in the blocked instances. But if we look at the linked instances, there is now “api.clubsall.com” and “clubsall-api4.renchesterjramos.workers.dev”
This is because federation is fairly complex and we are new to this and do not fully understand. I really do not know why we are getting content from lemmy.blahaj.zone when they have blocked us. The content is coming from federation, so how is it being pushed to clubsall after blocking?
You are channeling the traffic from 44k monthly active users to your website without giving credit to the instances where the content is created. In our last discussion, you said “your site is small, so people just ignore it. Should it become more active, then users are probably going to call their admins to defederate.” ClubsAll has not grown. This time you are saying we are not attributing. It seems even you change mind on to what is fair.
My request stays the same, give us some breathing room until some traffic threshold. Is that fair?
The content is coming from federation, so how is it being pushed to clubsall after blocking?
I blocked your instance based on your domain. But because you are using other domains to pull the content, you’re still receiving content from the domains you use that I haven’t blocked.
My request stays the same, give us some breathing room until some traffic threshold. Is that fair?
What is your plan for what clubsall will look like? I have no interest in killing a new and interesting platform for building community in the lemmy space. But if you’re just going to pull content from lemmy instances without giving anything back, that’s not building community…
Tell me you’ve got plans for something other than a content scraper, and I’ll happily work with you.
@db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com interested in cutting this site off perhaps?
@jerry@fedia.io This seems like a reasonable instance for Fedia to block.
Hello @Chozo@fedia.io and @jerry@fedia.io I am the creator of Clubsall. Can we have a discussion first so we can agree what is fair and I have a chance to save clubsall?
Calling in @jwr1@kbin.earth re possible domain block.
Hello @haverholm@kbin.earth and @jwr1@kbin.earth I am the creator of Clubsall. Please see my update above. Based on previous discussion, I was under the impression that until there is meaningful traffic, it is ok to give us time to implement federation. There were a set of rules proposed in another thread. However, seems like the rules were not finalized or not accepted or not distributed. If those rules are not acceptable, can we have a discussion first so we can agree what is fair and I have a chance to save clubsall?
Thanks
i generally only block for spam or technical/legal reasons.
blocked for technical reason: scraper.
Last time they said their developer left. I doubt they found a new one in the meantime so I suspect this site will die soon
I was expecting that too, I was surprised to see it was still online
Websites don’t go offline that fast, especially if there’s sunk costs involved.
I’m unfamiliar with Clubsall. Is it pulling them via federation or fetching via API? Would defederating work? I appear to have already defederated, likely in response to your earlier post, but not sure if that does anything. And that only stops them from pulling content from my instance, not what I posted to any other.
ActivityPub I would say, they show up on https://lemmy.world/instances for instance
api.clubsall.com
clubsall-api.renchesterjramos.workers.dev
clubsall-api.appcafe.workers.dev
clubsall-api3.renchesterjramos.workers.dev
clubsall-api2.appcafe.workers.dev
clubsall-api2.renchesterjramos.workers.dev
clubsall-api4.renchesterjramos.workers.devThanks. I just had the main domain blocked, but I think I needed all of the subdomains as well. From the looks of those worker domains, it may be a cat-mouse game trying to keep them blocked.
Thanks for this, we should get a wiki going somewhere for admins
Please include me
So im a bit confused, if they are federated whats the issue? Is it just a one way street or something?
It’s a one way federation: they only fetch Lemmy’s comment, but don’t allow other instances to get their content.
There are more details in the post linked in the OP
this isn’t entirely true, they do have some comments on lemmy as well, here are some examples:
- https://programming.dev/u/vinaya@api.clubsall.com
- https://programming.dev/u/chester22@api.clubsall.com
- https://programming.dev/u/impresario@api.clubsall.com
- https://programming.dev/u/luckymann@api.clubsall.com
- https://sh.itjust.works/u/BlazeFromLemmy@api.clubsall.com
it seems to be primarily about their communities not federating though i guess?
and either nobody from there posted a post to a lemmy community yet or maybe it doesn’t federate posts currently?
I was talking about the communities indeed.
From the project creator
Sorry you feel that way. Keep in mind that we built everything from scratch. Federation is not currently implemented, and we’ll need time.
ugh, i didn’t notice they’re even hiding domains of remote communities for “simplicity” in most cases. that seems so much more dishonest tbh.
The idea was to simplify federation for a non tech user. I believe that is literally why ActivityPub is not able to effectively compete.
We are trying to simplify by hiding all complexities. If we try nothing new, the results will not change. There have been many threads about ClubsAll and everyone disagrees what is fair and unfair, so it has been difficult for us to comply. Would it be fair to ask for a common set of rules to be fair to everyone and give me a chance to save clubsall?
Yes, the whole thing is fishy
Just saw this and while I can’t check at the moment the instances admins I’ve pinged might want to consider defederating from Clubsall
@snowe@programming.dev @Ategon@programming.dev @mp3@lemmy.ca @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
Hi there, I am creator of clubsall. There are a lot of adhoc discussions and rules. Some discussions such as this one does skip my notice too. So it has been very difficult to be fair and run a new instance. It seems anyone trying to build a lemmy competitor is being killed. If that is the rule, lets state that and I will kill clubsall myself.
If not, can I request a discussion or at least a set of rules that we should comply to so I can save clubsall?
@snowe@programming.dev @Ategon@programming.dev @mp3@lemmy.ca @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
My concern is that you receive content from our communities without generating anything back
It seems anyone trying to build a lemmy competitor is being killed. If that is the rule, lets state that and I will kill clubsall myself.
Oh yes, that’s probably why https://piefed.social/ and https://kbin.melroy.org/ are never praised as alternatives, nor are they fully compatible with Lemmy both ways.
(For people unaware, they are)
Defederated. If they start federating outwards, I’ll lift it
Well done!
Defederated
What’s the issue with this?
its nonreciprocal for monetary gain.
they seem to be in quite a hurry into ingest remote content while not really creating any method whatsoever to attribute that content to its source, or allow their users to interact.
Hello there, I am the creator of clubsall. We are not in a hurry. In fact as stated, my developer has left, that has halted our development. Also, we are a very small site with < 10 comments a month and I believe 0 posts. So federation will hardly help everyone. Still we want to implement federation, please read my update above.
My request is to agree on common and fair rules so we can be seen as upstanding community participants.
sure. its pretty simple… dont put out a product that cannot participate fully. there are many unfinished platforms, but they dont scrape the fediverse content because, ya know, theyre unfinished.
as soon as you get full federation implemented (or even basic linkbacks to the original content), youre welcome to let everyone know so they stop blocking your scraping mechanism.
until then your unfinished product will likely be blocked.
Thanks for this. My worry is that other admins have different set of rules. Someone said clubsall should be open sourced, someone said clubsall should be self hostable, another person said, it should attribute posts and have canonical links. Unfortunately the admins do not seem to have common agreed set of rules that are fair. So no matter what we do, it seems we will be blocked. Can we have a viable alternative?
There was a discussion about having a common set of rules which had proposal which is different than yours. So I am requesting some breathing room exception based on traffic, so we can survive until we can develop more or there is a common set of rules agreed to. Would that be fair?
i would say youre running before you can walk.
you have an unfinished product, and you say youre in no hurry… then why do you insist on scraping the fediverse?
finish your product, or dont. if you cant, there are plenty of open source platforms you could implement today. but youre not. why not?
if you insist on building a new wheel, finish it already or stop asking why people dont want to interact with you.
The issue is that definition of “finish” varies person to person. This is why I am asking for a common set of fair rules we can agree on, so we can finish.
im tellin ya. make a product that participates and attributes the content back to its source, or dont bother. those are your options.
as it is you are monetizing other sites content with no attribution.
