"Father of Lobster" questions SkillHub for unauthorized data scraping; Tencent responds and issues an apology

Phoenix Technology News (Author: Yu Lei) — On March 12, industry attention was drawn to the controversy over data scraping involving the open-source project OpenClaw and Tencent’s AI platform SkillHub. “Lobster Father” OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger publicly stated that Tencent scraped data from his platform on a large scale without prior communication, causing official servers to face costs reaching five figures in USD.

In response to developer concerns, Tencent quickly clarified that during the first week of SkillHub’s launch, it handled 180GB of data traffic for users, but only made 1GB of non-concurrent requests to the official source, significantly easing the original project’s server load. Additionally, a Tencent representative apologized for the sudden increase in server load and revealed that several active code contributors are currently involved, with future plans to provide ongoing technical and financial support as sponsors for the ecosystem.

Regarding Tencent’s data explanation and cooperation intentions, Steinberger later responded, acknowledging the positive role of mirror platforms in sharing traffic, but emphasized that collaboration should be based on prior communication. Currently, technical load reduction plans and potential official sponsorship discussions are ongoing.

(Edited by: Wang Zhiqiang HF013)

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