Discussion about ClubsAll

Hello, sh.itjust.works community. I am curious what you think about ClubsAll, and whether you think we should stay federated with them. A few other Lemmy instances have recently defederated so this seems like a timely topic for discussion.

In short, ClubsAll is an ActivityPub-compatible Reddit clone. The site currently has one-way federation with no attribution: ClubsAll pulls content from Lemmy and displays it as local ClubsAll content. For example, you can visit https://clubsall.com/c/196 and there is no indication that the content is from https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/c/196.

Here are relevant posts with more information and context:

General discussion: Let's talk about ClubsAll (the ClubsAll founder left comments in this post)
Recent update to that general discussion: As a reminder, ClubsAll is still showing all of Lemmy's content without federating back

In the first post the ClubsAll founder commented that they plan to eventually have two-way federation, and to make the project open source. Whether those things actually happens is anyone's guess.

What do you think?

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31 comments

I will leave my personal opinions down here in the comments.
On one hand, no harm is being done. It's possible this is a temporary situation due to ClubsAll being young and in development. Also, all our data on Lemmy is public anyway; we cannot stop others from scraping it.
On the other hand, on principle I don't like one-way interaction and the way ClubsAll presents Lemmy content as their own. It feels deceptive. Defederation would be a symbolic way to protest that behavior.
I am torn. At the moment I am slightly in favor of defederation.
- How about giving some leeway if they have indicated the intent to fully federate? Say, if they don't support bidirectional federation with 6 months (?), they will be defederated provisionally until they do. That way, we're still taking their declared intent in good faith, but not being a pushover.
  
  I like this solution.
  
  Seems reasonable. I don't have any technical complaint with what they're doing, but it feels icky as long as there's no attribution.
  
  Our challenge has been that many people feel differently to what is fair. So I have been requesting if all admins can agree to a common set of rules so we can comply with it and be upstanding community members. Is that reasonable request?
  
  That seems fair.
  
  Thank you. I request the defederation being traffic based rather than time based. Would that be fair?
  
  I mean, ultimately I'm just a user making a suggestion, of what sort of approach seems fair. I'm not certain what a reasonable time (or traffic) limit would be, exactly. I think if you were to make a suggestion to the admins, they'd likely accept it so long as it's reasonable.
  
  I like this. I will put a reminder on my calendar to check on ClubsAll in a few months. If more users complain about it then we can reconsider the approach.
  
  I'm not sure if they're aware of this thread, but I think the important part would be to notify them of the intended consequence. The point of the deadline is so that the other party is incentivised to implement compliance in a reasonably timely fashion.
  Otherwise, the arbitrary date of now isn't much different than that of a few months later.
- I've been around the block a few times, so maybe I'm just jaded.
  My take is that it's a proprietary platform, siphoning user data/content to redisplay and monetize.
  Additionally, my gut feeling is that they don't care about the community at all, and are just trying to leverage it to make money. They want to be the next reddit, and think the fediverse is their ticket. And I don't think anything I've seen so far indicates otherwise.
  We block Threads, and I think we should block this, too, immediately. If, in the future, the situation changes and they actually "give and take" rather than just "take" , then it should be simple enough to refederate.
  My 2c.
  
  If I wanted to start another Reddit, this is what I would do. Hell, siphoning content from Reddit is still done in many places on Lemmy to stock the pond. In this case, we have the opportunity to stop it before a competing platform takes off. If they’re not going to play by the rules of federation, they don’t deserve the bounty.
  
  Hello @baggachipz@sh.itjust.works are there some documented rules of federation that I am missing? Please point me.
  
  rules of federation that I am missing
  If you federate content in, federate your own content out
  
  This is based on what feels fair to you and not a documented rule. The issue is that everyone has their own version of what is fair - federate out, self hosted, open source, attribution, usernames shown in particular way, exemption (or no exemption) for smaller sites based on time or traffic and so on.
  In any case, this is a goal we are working towards. As we discussed before, this will be done before ClubsAll has any meaningful traffic.
  
  But, to be honest, what I am bothered by, is the fact that the website doesn’t give an attribution in the UI about which instance certain users are from and which instance certain certain community are from.
  https://slrpnk.net/comment/12723802
  blocked for technical reason: scraper.
  https://moist.catsweat.com/m/fediverse@lemmy.world/t/670763/-/comment/5352039
  My concern in this is the integrity of the fediverse and its users. Yours, apparently, is “saving” a platform that leeches content off federated platforms to make a buck off those users. I don’t see much chance of agreement on “what is fair”.
  https://kbin.earth/m/fediverse@lemmy.world/t/741461/-/comment/4153987
  Can’t have it both ways of leeching the posts from other large instances while simultaneously making it an exclusive club where only local users can participate, it goes contrary to the social contract and spirit of the Fediverse.
  https://lemmy.ca/comment/13413542
  
  A few others have expressed concerns with attribution. So as suggested we will be changing username from /u/xyz to /u/xyz@domain.com . I hope that addresses your concern.
  As you know, the comments are federated. Also, our development was blocked due to sublinks development being blocked. Also as I mentioned elsewhere we have 10 users with no posts, so users are missing out on exactly 0 posts. I am not having it both ways. At present we are sharing what we have (comments and 0 posts).
  Also, we are working on making it better. I agree definition of fairness varies, but giving some time to new instances, especially the ones who are developing from scratch, is fairly reasonable. Let's say average 1 comment a day (i.e. 30 comments a month) can be seen by everyone (as we are federating) and is a very basic ask without hurting any other instances in community.
  
  If you fix the attribution, that would probably be good enough for a lot of people.
  In the meantime, be ready for this kind of posts every 2-3 months.
  
  Hi there, I am creator of clubsall. We absolutely do care about community.
  There were many discussion few months ago. There were also private discussions with some admins. Because we are not lemmy based, so our development takes time (plus my developer left, plus we were trying to move to sublinks which itself has federation issues). So federation for us is not a config setting. Also, we are a very niche site with almost no traffic.
  Additionally, different admins feel different rules are fair, so it is hard for us to know how to be good community members. I request a common set of rules, preferably based on traffic, so any newbie can get the breathing room to develop and participate. Does that sound fair?
  
  We absolutely do care about community.
  You can say that all you want, but actions speak louder than words.
  Because we are not lemmy based, so our development takes time (plus my developer left, plus we were trying to move to sublinks which itself has federation issues). So federation for us is not a config setting.
  You launched what you apparently considered to be your MVP, and it's a one-way leech of fediverse user content.
  The fact that you were willing to launch without federation in place signals, at least to me, that you care far less about community participation than you do about the content the community produces.
  Additionally, different admins feel different rules are fair, so it is hard for us to know how to be good community members.
  Welcome to the fediverse, where every software stack works a little differently, and every server has its own rules.
  I request a common set of rules, preferably based on traffic, so any newbie can get the breathing room to develop and participate. Does that sound fair?
  You're asking for someone to give you a set of common rules across all instances? For unpaid users and/or volunteer admins to spend their time compiling this information just to provide it to you?
  No, actually. To me that doesn't sound fair at all.
- Hi there, I am creator of clubsall.
  Please see my updates. We are not intentionally blocking federation, we just do not have that capability (as we are not a lemmy instance). So I am requesting common fair set of rules, so I can save clubsall.
- I agree with this opinion. Do what you gotta do.
  
  Please see my updates. Let me know if my proposal is fair.

31 comments