Double comments

2026-04-28 11:26:52

adminsforum@hubzilla.org

morph ⌂ wrote the following post Tue, 28 Apr 2026 11:25:36 +0200

Double comments

@Hubzilla Support Forum
People (on Mastodon) told me they receive my comments twice. Could that be related to the clone?

2026-04-28 11:53:37

Der Pepe (Hubzilla) ⁂

pepecyb@hub.hubzilla.hu

@Hubzilla Support Forum @morph ⌂

This was the topic of discussion last Wednesday at the (German-language) Hubzilla workshop, which focused on ‘cloning’.

In fact, channel clones ‘take’ all connections with them. However, the functionality of Nomad/Zot6 prevents posts made on the ‘original’ – that is, the channel on the primary hub – from being delivered multiple times to the other clones via synchronisation. ActivityPub connections are also carried over to clones, but are marked with the badge “Not connected here” because AP does not understand Hubzilla’s nomadic identity. If you then connect to the clone using an AP connection as well, this constitutes a new, separate connection for the AP connection. Your channel will then appear twice to these users, each with a different Webbie. If you now post something on your primary channel, this is synchronised with the clone channel, which has the side effect that the AP connection receives the post once from the primary channel, but also from the clone.

If you have two clones and establish a connection to an AP channel on both clones, then this connection actually receives your post three times. With three clones, four times, ... aaaaargh!

A practical way to minimise this problem (for the AP connections) is not to establish the connection to AP channels on the clones initially. If you need to fall back on a clone for only a short time (for whatever reason), you must (and can) accept that the AP connections will not receive your post immediately. Connecting to the clone retrospectively is really only worthwhile and sensible if the primary channel is down for a prolonged period or permanently, or if you want to make a genuine switch to the clone (which then becomes the primary clone).