Someone earlier said that brave was based on chrome and when google blocked ublock origin on Chrome, it would stop working on brave too.

Update on this request: A developer approached me and is not only helping me with review and fix security issues. We found quite concerning security issues, so I think the decision to have another person look at this was right one.

We discussed and found that we need to do following work

1. Redo backend/api so it is more robust, while doing that it will also become Lemmy API compatible
2. Fix client so it adapt to any API changes
3. Move from cloudflare workers to docker, so it can be self hosted
4. Move from D1 to postgres (D1 has 10GB limit, ClubsAll db is already 5GB), so it is scalable
5. Move production to a VM or k8s cluster so we can host our own DB, backend and frontend instead of CF workers

We have some work to do but will have a good product at the end of it. We will update further once we get this work done. Thanks to everyone to your thoughts and offers to help.

Hi everyone, I’m Vinay, the founder of ClubsAll. I’ve noticed some negative sentiment, and I can understand why. I’ll do my best to clarify all the questions raised here.

https://clubsall.com/c/fediverse gives a 404, hiding posts such as the one we’re in. Very early censorship? Their approach to combining similar communities into one club could be the cause, and maybe they just haven’t set up the c/fediverse club yet.

Lemmy is too big to show everything. To keep costs low and due to some technical constraints with hosting, we had to prioritize what would be most useful to the broader community. If we show everything, the database won't be able to handle it, and I won't be able to afford the hosting costs.

There is no mention that this is content from lemmy.world. This is intentional. For federated servers to really compete, complexity needs to be eliminated. One of the goals of ClubsAll is to simplify everything, so we hide servers, instances, multiple logins etc that can be confusing and overwhelming for a new user. We're innovating and trying something different to help the Fediverse succeed. However, if we’re violating any community guidelines or site policies, please let us know.

This looks like a clear monetization attempt. We just launched. Please give us time to survive and implement features before jumping to conclusions.

They’re not contributing, and we don’t need proprietary cancer in the Fediverse.

Sorry you feel that way. Keep in mind that we built everything from scratch. Federation is not currently implemented, and we’ll need time.

Personally, I hope they open source, because the interface is visually appealing and quite fast. What I expect is most instances defederating from them soon, killing the product in the process.

Thank you for the compliment! I do intend to open source ClubsAll once I get some help. I truly appreciate the feedback and hope we are not defederated.

Being a single site, it might draw the wrong crowd and end up having serious moderation problems.

This is insightful and another reason for us to prioritize federation.

Seems to bring us back to the current Reddit situation with extra steps.

That’s a valid concern. However, I’ll open source the project once I get some assistance, which should alleviate some of these fears.

If you query it like a federated platform would, it returns HTML rather than the required JSON.

Keep in mind, ClubsAll was built from scratch and is funded entirely out of pocket. We’ve done as much as we can with what’s currently online (and a couple of new features are coming soon that I’m testing).

It seems to be a project where missing features are likely due to it still being at an early stage.

That’s exactly right. This is the main reason. Unfortunately, our developer recently left, so we’re at a bit of a feature freeze for now, aside from a couple of things coming soon.

Lack of details on how they implement federation.

We built federation from scratch, so many features are still missing. Currently, we don't federate, so it’s not possible to follow from elsewhere at this time.

Hi everyone, I’m Vinay, the founder of ClubsAll. I’m happy to answer any questions and would like to address where I think ClubsAll might be misunderstood.

“I think it’s unfair for them to federate all our posts and comments, making their platform seem busy, while they don’t allow federation of their own content or self-hosting.”

I completely agree with this concern. However, it’s important to note that ClubsAll is still in its infancy. We currently have around 10 upvotes on Product Hunt, with a nearly non-existent active user base or content. So even if we implement federation, the activity level would be minimal for now.

“We could establish a federation policy across instances, ensuring no single-direction federation of content.”

This proposal seems fair. I’d like to suggest an additional condition: “No single-direction federation of content once an instance reaches a certain level of activity, say, X posts per day.”
The reasoning here is that new and small instances like ClubsAll need time to grow and develop their features before being subjected to such rules. This approach ensures that very young instances aren’t immediately blocked, especially when they might not have much content anyway.

There’s also been talk about defederation. I want to be transparent – ClubsAll is bootstrapped and we have invested a lot of money and sweat to help the community. Right now even my developer has moved on, so new development has halted. This is why I was forced to launch.

If the community chooses to turn against ClubsAll, it won’t survive. That said, I’ll leave the decision to you. Defederation would immediately kill it. If defederation is the path chosen, then so be it.

I think lemmy left a lot to be desired.

Under Obama, during QE 1 2 3 etc., a lot of taxpayer (your and mine) money was given to banks interest free to buy up property to hold its value. Banks had nothing to lose, money was free. In other words, taxpayer money was used to reduce inventory which in turn jacked up housing prices that taxpayers could not afford. In a free market, housing should fall with affordability, instead here our money was made to work against us.

So yes, democrats did contribute a lot to cost of living.

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?

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.

We fixed the attribution. Now usernames show up as /u/@ (rather than earlier /u/ and no server). Also the server name can be seen in the right bar. Let me know if this fixes the main issue you had.

Also for a deadline of federation will you be ok if I commit to doing it before we have 100 active users a month? (since our comments are federated out, it is easy to see how many active users we have. I can also report whenever someone asks).

Question for everyone here, how is everyone paying for hosting and development costs? While profit is not my motive, break even is needed for long term sustainability.

Do you have any idea of the timeframe when you’ll be able to open source the project?

I replied in the other thread, copy pasting here: Open sourcing is not time dependent. I just need

1. security review by someone experienced to make sure we do not instantly get hacked as soon as we open
2. and some commitment to fix critical bugs and hacks that will kill ClubsAll or steal resources

what are the languages used to develop ClubsAll Ah, good question. It is typescript, next, React, Cloudflare

Well rather, how will you pick which communities go in that feed? It’s not a bad plan, but transparency would encourage your users to use that feed

Homepage should be based on communities with maximum subscribers. But with a login, each user can subscriber/unsubscribe and create their custom homepage. Yes, once we have some stability and traffic, we should publish these choices we made for transparency.

With how new fediverse tech is, a lot of new rules will be “written” based on what people try. Obfuscating or misleading people on where content is coming from (which is the concern people are expressing here), seems like something people will push back against.

Obfuscation was not the objective. Now after many complained, you can see real username and servername on each post.

As such, you might find it easier to build a userbase by avoiding what Reddit has done rather than try to emulate it

That is not my vision and I am ok if users decide this is not what they want and adoption fails.

comment from vinay 1

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.

Yes this is easy to implement. While I do not fully agree because impersonation can still be done by using username Bytes0nBikes. I feel showing instance names adds complexity for the user and it does not fully address impersonation anyways.

But then again, even though I disagree, many people mentioned that lack of attribution bothers them. So I should take feedback and get this done. I hope this is what everyone meant and they will accept this as a solution.

This is rather easier to implement. I should be able to get this done rather quickly. I will try to do this before end of Dec.

Sorry for late reply.

I posted update elsewhere but here it is again

1. After some discussion with another fediverse developer, he recommended we move to sublinks library. I posted our tech plans here https://lemmy.world/comment/12922172. This will achieve a number of things - move db to postgres, deployment to docker/k8s, enable lemmy clients, make some security changes so our passwords are not exposed, this in turn will enable open sourcing and self hosting. This seems the best path forward.
2. We almost completed the move when we found out that sublinks library itself does not have federation implemented. I was told it will be picked up in 2025 but it is also being developer by volunteers, so the timeline is not certain. Since we almost finished move to sublinks, as soon as they have federation, we should be able to move very quickly since work on our side is mostly done. ========================

How are you planning to do this in the long run? Hand picking communities will be hard to scale I want to find the communities I like, and I’m not sure I’d like a curated feed like that.

Core idea is to create a frontend for simple users who do not want to learn about servers and navigation to use a product. So we are starting with curated feed, once we have traffic, we can add features for advanced users to let users pick any community from any server.

Instead, would you consider keeping the servers and instances but making them smaller in the UI? That way it’s not a distraction, but the information is still there. A lot of people mentioned it this time around. So we will show the instance name along with username i.e. change from /u/otter to /u/[email protected] . This should be live before 2025. Hope this addresses your concern.

The problem the fediverse is tackling is centralization, not lack of open source. That’s what the comment was referring to. If the goal of this project is to be a one stop shop for all threadiverse content, you’re not going to find much support here.

Understood. Not everyone has to or will agree with what others are doing. I am trying something different. I am only asking for not enforcing undocumented rules too hard until we have some minimum traffic like let's say 100 active users in a month (can be easily seen by who makes comments, Comments are federated). That should be reasonable to say "now you have some traction, do participate in community"

That’s totally ok, the fediverse has many projects like this in various stages of development. The concern expressed in this thread is less about what the project is doing now, and more about clarity on what the future plans are. For example: funding through donations instead of paid accounts, advertising, and user data a confirmation on what kind of federation it will have

It will have 2 way federation. As for funding, I am myself not sure, we have to try something different, whatever works. Again, while others may disagree, but are there rules on what not to do? What I see is that donation approach alone has not generated enough money for any server to be a real competitor. So are others free to try other things?

I am creator of ClubsAll, can you ELI5 this to me. What is attribution with canonical tags and how does that break SEO for others?

That is fair to say. We are not trying to have it both ways, just need time to get there. We started with moving to sublinks library. This seems to be the best path forward, but timelines got extended after we found out that federation out is also under development there as well.

Thank you. I request the defederation being traffic based rather than time based. Would that be fair?

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?