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Github restricts public Faceswap repo to logged-in users
- jordwalke 8y agoMore discussion on the topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/github/comments/99aovq/unable_to_access_this_github_repository_from/ https://www.reddit.com/r/github/comments/99aovq/unable_to_ac...
- sandov 8y agoThat thread is 5 months old, so apparently the censoring is 5 months old.
- akerro 8y agoYes, microsoft blocked a lot of features in days after takeover. Try searching for code being logged out.
- majewsky 8y agoCode search has been restricted to logged-in users way before the MS takeover. Proof: When searching "github code search login" on hn.algolia.com, it turns up this HN thread from September 2016, nearly 2 years before MS bought GitHub: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12581068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12581068
- luma 8y agoThis particular repo was blocked well before the MS buyout. Whatever decision was made, it was GitHub not MS who made it.
- Proven 8y agoBig deal. Why should we care? Anyone can fork and mirror it where they want, and make it accessible to anonymous users. Sure, that would "inconvenience" some users, but so what? Github doesn't exist to please every single person out there. Create your own mirror, and let us know the URL. Don't just whine and try to manufacture outrage if you aren't willing to do contribute resources required to host the code yourself. I fully support Github's right to use their property (github.com) as they please, because I want the same right for myself.
- marcinzm 8y agoGithub is free to do whatever they want and everyone else is free to complain about. Freedom to do something does not mean you're free of consequences for doing so.
- simplecomplex 8y agoI can’t imagine the blowback about censorship would be worth this. Censoring will just draw more attention and traffic. What’s really unsettling is that GitHub is playing politics with its users, without even informing them or communicating with them. You would think they would have the courtesy to tell the owner.
- RantyDave 8y agoI don't think they're playing politics, I think they're playing "don't get your arse kicked by the government". Very interesting that someone wants to know the names and emails of everyone accessing OSS deep fakery - I wonder what else there is...
- xiphias2 8y agoIt looks like it was 5 months ago, not much after Microsoft bought GitHub. It looks like they do enterprisy things already that will make people like GitLab better.
- osivertsson 8y agoHow can management at Microsoft/GitHub be so clueless? When I think about people I know who have been long-time users of GitHub and how this kind of censorship resonates with them... Oh my. These early adopters could migrate away very quickly.
- SamReidHughes 8y agoThis behavior was around since before the acquisition [3]. [3] https://github.com/deepfakes/faceswap/issues/392 https://github.com/deepfakes/faceswap/issues/392
- alexcnwy 8y agoThis is troubling in the context of OpenAI deciding not to release their code and dataset for fear of it being put to bad use. It's a tricky topic but I get nervous at the idea of research being censored.
- darawk 8y agoOpenAI doing this was just to get attention. Any funded entity could trivially reproduce their work. There is no way this was done out of any serious, principled fear of bad actors getting their hands on it.
- jobigoud 8y agoBut if they publish the pretrained model then not just funded entities can reproduce their work, but essentially any person that can type `pip install tensorflow` or whatever. That's pretty big reach difference. Although, probably only a few months timewise.
- darawk 8y agoYa, but 'pip install tensorflow' is about as hard as reproducing the work from their paper too. Anyone with a CS degree should be able to do it with a bit of effort. I agree that that is still a reach difference, but I think it's kind of negligible here.
- robsont 8y agoI think you are vastly underestimating the difficulty of achieving those result.
- darawk 8y agoI don't think so. They published a paper describing their methods. I've implemented techniques from papers like these before, it's not that hard. What they're doing doesn't seem especially complicated to me.
- amrrs 8y ago>Due to our concerns about malicious applications of the technology, we are not releasing the trained model. > We are aware that some researchers have the technical capacity to reproduce and open source our results. We believe our release strategy limits the initial set of organizations who may choose to do this, and gives the AI community more time to have a discussion about the implications of such systems. Excerpt from the recent OpenAI blogpost about GPT2 text models. It seems valid since giving the code or probably a web app can make anyone easily create malicious intent content online
- o10449366 8y agoI would not be surprised if it turns out Microsoft is behind this.
- cazum 8y agoWell, Microsoft does own GitHub. Who else would be behind it?
- alexeldeib 8y agoI think the implication was that MS directed someone in the GitHub org to do this, rather than someone in the org making that decision independently. As a Microsoft employee, it would be even more enormously disappointing if this were a top down rather than internal org decision.
- seotut2 8y agoIt's interesting that git cloning the repo works even without logging in.
- jordwalke 8y agoAre your ssh keys being used? Or did you use the https:// https:// endpoint?
- davidcorbin 8y agoThe https endpoint works without authentication
- regecks 8y agoAnother curiosity is that it still shows up in the search results for anonymous users: https://github.com/search?q=faceswap https://github.com/search?q=faceswap Hard to guess at the intention.
- est31 8y agoYet another curiosity is that the repo itself is only accessible to logged in users, it's almost 3 thousand forks are not. This is a half baked GitHub feature. It's pretty stupid to make it only available to logged in users as all it's doing is annoying people. Hope this "feature" stays half-baked, don't want GitHub to become authwalled like LinkedIn has become.
- _microsoft 8y agoMicrosoft.
- everdev 8y ago> Like any technology, it can be used for good or it can be abused. Important to note that it is also possible for a technology to have more potential for abuse than good. Sure, you can come to a philosophical place where nothing is good or bad, or the good is perfectly balanced by the bad, but if we're looking at increasing freedom, peace and trust, it's hard to see how the upside of this tech is equivalent to it's potential for abuse. The best argument might be that eventually no one will trust video.
- shittyadmin 8y agoBasically, this is all possible using existing technologies, it's just labour intensive. As such, tools like this just prove the conclusion: No one should trust video.
- timkpaine 8y agoIt's funny how no major CS curriculum at a major University includes a legitimate ethics course. In the modern era, programmers are akin to lawyers or politicians; we wield immense, and often implicitly trusted power over hundreds of millions of opinions. It's long past due that programmers be required to adhere to ethical codes, maybe even to the extent of bad-style licensing.
- arcticbull 8y agoMy Canadian software engineering degree included a substantial engineering ethics course shared with the rest of the engineering flavors (including mechanical and aerospace). At the time, I thought it was a waste, but the further down my career I go the more valuable it was in retrospect. I also can't call myself an engineer in Canada without joining a provincial engineering organization (like the PEO in Ontario).
- mgbmtl 8y agoI agree for engineering classes, but those completing a computer science (CS in a science or arts faculty) degree in Canada usually do not have any regulatory oversight of any kind and no ethics classes. However, in the Quebec system (and presumably the equivalent in other provinces) we have 3 philosophy classes (humanities, world-view etc) in college/cégep (somewhat mandatory before university). I also had a mandatory ethics class since I completed a technical degree, which I also did not appreciate at the time, but it helped me develop more critical thinking later on.
- aaronbrethorst 8y ago“I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to create fake nudes of celebrities.” — definitely Voltaire, for sure. /s
- qubex 8y agoAs a nudist I’ve often thought this DeepFakery might allow people to take a sigh of relief, take off all their clothes if they so please, and dismiss any photographic or video ‘evidence’ of the event as a fake. And wouldn’t that be liberating? I’m reminded of indistinguishable-from-real-but-fake-data called “bogons” from Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon.
- shittyadmin 8y agoI wonder if this might actually have some benefits for victims of revenge or leaked porn, including celebrities in the long run - "oh, that's photoshopped" seems an easy way to put something to bed.
- qubex 8y agoPrecisely — but how dumb is it that we actually experience a societal need to put what evidently is pretty widespread ordinary behaviour “to bed” in a plausibly deniable manner?
- enitihas 8y agoAsking for a login in incognito for me.
- vortico 8y agoJust to make sure, is the relevant behavior here that going to the URL shows its generic login form when not logged in? Definitely can't be unintentional.
- aaronbrethorst 8y agoTechnology is not inherently neutral, and it’s time our industry collectively grows up and stops treating it as such. I hope this is a harbinger of that.
- manigandham 8y agoYes it is. The basic definition of technology is applied science. It's as neutral as it gets. The morality and behavior come from the humans that use it.
- fcarraldo 8y agoWhat if the morality and behavior comes from the humans who apply it? Is applied applied science still as neutral as it gets?
- manigandham 8y ago"Applied" in this context means turning theory into practice It doesn't refer to who's actually physically using the tech.
- aaronbrethorst 8y agoTen bucks says you work on something that has to do with adtech or free to play games.
- dang 8y agoWould you please not get personal in arguments here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- palindromea 8y agoYou don't understand science nor technology.
- shittyadmin 8y ago
- timkpaine 8y agoWhat's more scary than fake sex tapes is the potential for easy plausible deniability for real criminality.
- CamperBob2 8y agoOr framing people.
- malloryerik 8y agoOr false incrimination, false flag operations and so on. You can start a war with a video. That might change to some degree as trust in video decreases, but what trust will take its place?
- sametmax 8y agoWe could already, and we probably did, fake video to start wars. The tech just make it easy for everybody, but state actors have been manipulating pictures for a long time.
- humanrebar 8y agoLooks like tribalism so far. Signalling group membership and other kinds of virtue signalling, probably overriding rationalism and evidence.
- shittyadmin 8y agoI honestly think it's incredibly important for tools like this to be publicly available for this exact reason. If they're not and they're hoarded by tech companies or intelligence agencies then we'll just have a lopsided system where people aren't aware of how capable such technologies are, what their limitations are, how to analyze them to spot issues, etc. Imagine if only nationstates knew about these sorts of technologies and used them for war or if only certain elites in tech had access to them and used them to implicate competitors in crimes? The technology is out there now - at this point, public knowledge is our best defense - people always question if a contentious image is photoshopped, we want that same level of questioning to happen for videos. In terms of this being used as an excuse to get someone out a criminal charge, it might make us take a better look at the chain of custody on video evidence but I don't think it would invalidate it completely.
- jorblumesea 8y agoI wonder if some AI technologies will need a non proliferation pact similar to nuclear weapons. Similar to how centrifuge technology was a guarded secret, perhaps we should consider something for the most damaging of AI patterns. While I agree technology isn't inherently good or evil, this feels more harmful than helpful.
- beatle_sauce 8y ago`git clone https://github.com/deepfakes/faceswap.git` https://github.com/deepfakes/faceswap.git` still works without login...
- 0gz 8y agoYou can also see forks without login. https://github.com/0i0/faceswap https://github.com/0i0/faceswap
- P_I_Staker 8y agoI'm at a loss for what this will actually do in the long run. Seems like someone can just do an unofficial "pirate fork" or dump the code somewhere that doesn't track it's users. That would be a virtual certainty, if this ends up being an in demand thing.
- canofbars 8y agoMy guess is its to prevent a few of the non programmer journalists from viewing it and creating a drama storm.
- P_I_Staker 8y agoFair enough, I guess there's reasons, especially from a PR perspective. It just seems like a useless gesture to me.
- peterwwillis 8y agoThroughout human history, people have published information in order to discredit or defame their opponents. Sometimes this has worked. But in the majority of cases, what determined the result was the climate around said evidence, not the evidence itself. I can show verifiable, witnessed audio recordings of a guy saying he likes to grab women by the pussy, but that won't stop that guy from becoming President. Powerful tools don't run societies, people do.
- tokyodude 8y agoI'm of many minds about this Censorship: bad. That Life: The tech will get created by someone else so censoring does almost nothing. Better to put it out there so we can try to make defenses. Maybe make a bunch of fakes with famous people's permssion to spread the word how you can't trust video anymore Dangerous: To take an extreme example imagine you figured out how to make some kind of E=MC^2 bomb simply such that anyone with the knowledge could make a device that could blow up a city for $100 and a few hours of time. Would it be ok to upload those instructions to the internet for any disgruntled teen to repo? deepfakes are certainly not at that extreme but we can also clearly imagine the harm they could do as they progress. There have been several examples recently of people seeming to react to arguably false perceptions. I'm actually thinking of ones in the last 2-3 days but I'm sure there are plenty of others.
- akerro 8y agoHey! We love opensource and AI so let's being AI to communities! - Community creates a project that makes it impossible to track faces in social media and anywhere online. yghmmm, no, not that kind of AI
- Animats 8y agoSoon, "Sign in with your Microsoft account?"
- akerro 8y agoSince MS took over Github also code-search requires being logged in.
- saagarjha 8y agoAre you sure about that? I seem to recall them doing this for quite a while. Or maybe that was advanced code searches?
- ShorsHammer 8y agoQuite sure you are right, unless my memory is failing sitewide github search of codebases required a login. Searching for repo names without login was ok though. Possibly it was only enforced for very generic search queries returning thousands of results but it has been around a long time, Github acquisition was only in October 2018.
- tbodt 8y agoSitewide code search has been used to find AWS keys and other secrets people have accidentally uploaded. The login requirement is so they can set meaningful rate limits.
- majewsky 8y agoCode search has been restricted at least since September 2016 according to a quick search on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19185835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19185835
- OscarTheGrinch 8y agoYou could use site:github.com in a google search. Choose your poison.
- A2017U1 8y agoAlternative: !gh or !git anywhere in a ddg search will restrict it to github.
- jordwalke 8y agoHN changed the title of this from the original question: “GitHub censors deepfake source code for non logged in users? (Try incognito)” I have no opinion about whether or not that is a better title, but I thought it should be known that it was modified from its original.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoGood you mention it, because I did not understand intended meaning of current title ("Faceswap Github repo is public but requires a logged in user"). I scoured the README to see how they managed to restrict a standalone, offline piece of software. Turns out, it's Github who's restricting access. While censorship may not be an appropriate word, this is weird. Why would Github do something like that, except to force people accessing the repo to leave a trail leading to their PII?
- dang 8y agoThat's a fair point. I've modified it again to make it clearer that it's Github that did the restriction.
- DeepHomage 8y agoYou're way off base thinking that having users log in is some form of covert censorship from Github or Microsoft. I've been around the community and making deepfakes since before the reddit ban, and that repro has always required login, but not reasons your title implied. You're just guessing without any facts to back up your speculation.
- dang 8y agoA moderator changed it because of the tendentious use of the word 'censors'. Initially we changed it to the title of this issue that addresses the topic: https://github.com/deepfakes/faceswap/issues/392 https://github.com/deepfakes/faceswap/issues/392, but it turns out that wording was a bit unclear, so we modified it to be clearer.
- jordwalke 8y ago
- akerro 8y agoAh yes, Microsoft and their love and commitment to opensource!
- scrollaway 8y agoAs someone else said, this behaviour has been around since before the acquisition. Completely unwarranted cynicism.
- jamp897 8y agoThe concern around deep fakes is that they could be used to trick people, fair enough, but apparently tricking people doesn’t require much, if any, believably. Throughout history up to today people are tricked by the most obvious untruths with disastrous consequences on large scales.
- dublo7 8y agoThe end result of this is a bunch of trolls in Russia might be out of a job soon and get replaced by a server farm running in the target country pumping out similar but not identical stories. What this might usher in is the era of cryptographically signed news articles. Not just credibility but verifiability. Blocking
- noir_lord 8y ago> What this might usher in is the era of cryptographically signed news articles. Not just credibility but verifiability. Blocking. Huh, I'd never even considered that you could do that.
- pizza 8y agoFor what it's worth, it's almost never the case that the lack of proof of the identity of a news article author is what causes it to be fake news. More often, it's: - a fact that has been distorted to be interpreted in a 180 degree way (Americans paying tariffs to the US Gov for buying Chinese goods = Trump saying "China is finally paying us!"), or - a total untruth slipped in between valid concerns (like the fake Russian Black Lives Matter pages piggybacking off of civil rights abuses mentioned by the American Black Lives Matters campaigns), or just - incitement of uncertainty in more or less solved problem domains (anti-vaxxers) If you are interested in learning about more (failed attempts at) verified news platforms, though, try looking up verrit, and pravduh
- hanniabu 8y agoYes, but people quoted or referenced can provide their signature as proof to say they not only agree this is correct but that they also confirm it is not taken out of context or misconstrued.
- miguelmota 8y agoCan someone explain the reasoning for requiring login for this particular project?
- m0zg 8y agoHeh. They might have achieved the opposite of what they wanted to do. I did not know about this repo, and now I have a local clone, just in case they "censor" it for good.
- emerongi 8y agoStreisand effect. I also cloned the repo, just in case - wouldn't have otherwise.
- SXX 8y agoNot a surprise. GitHub comply with censorship requests from non-US government agencies around the world since forever.
- villgax 8y agoHow soon .docx for Readme? Works with clone though. Wonder how many more such repos exist? Do they have a transparency report which includes such action?
- qwerty9876 8y agoThis has been the case since it's release a year ago. very interesting, are they collecting data on who visits it?
- jake_the_third 8y agoThis is apparently github's doing, and not the people behind faceswap: https://github.com/deepfakes/faceswap/issues/392 https://github.com/deepfakes/faceswap/issues/392 Github has an infamous history with imposing their feelings on projects they don't like.
- maxnoe 8y ago> Github has an infamous history with imposing their feelings on projects they don't like. Can you elaborate on this part? I don't remember seeing something like this before.
- Jerry2 8y agoGithub got offended over the use of a word "retard" and they nuked a whole repo. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150802/20330431831/github-nukes-repository-over-use-word-retard.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150802/20330431831/githu... There's lots more examples of their employees getting triggered and offended by various things and then arbitrarily banning or censoring projects.
- benologist 8y agoNot to excuse Github but now it's Microsoft. I've never used Microsoft properties that included a public presence like Github before, what is their history like in these cases?
- smudgymcscmudge 8y agoApparently this was done at least nine months ago based on the issue linked above, so it was a pre-microsoft move.
- thosakwe 8y agoMeant to delete this comment, saw why I was wrong. (Can’t delete it now that I’ve edited it, oops)
- 40four 8y agoComedian Kyle Dunnigan does the best stuff around with face swap https://www.instagram.com/kyledunnigan1/ https://www.instagram.com/kyledunnigan1/ He does parody videos of Trump, Kardashians & a lot of other celebrities. Really funny stuff. Take a look if you haven't seen! Everyone is focusing on the negative, but this guy is making something positive I believe.
- thrownaway954 8y agoSPA = Single Page Application Notice how that says "Application", not website. It amazes me how people want to make their WordPress site into an SPA simply because someone told them to do so or it was the next "hip" thing to do. SPA have their place... migrating a desktop application to the web and making it a SPA makes perfect sense to me.
- thewarpaint 8y agoWrong parent.
- AndrewHampton 8y ago> We will take a zero tolerance approach to anyone using this software for any unethical purposes and will actively discourage any such uses. Why not change the license to enforce the use restictions?
- Sadkov 8y agoHappened to me too, after I published my book criticizing Russia: https://github.com/saniv/text/blob/master/one-life-in-russia-eng.md https://github.com/saniv/text/blob/master/one-life-in-russia... Hi Nikita, Thanks for writing in. Your repositories were set to require a login to view following multiple reports from users concerned about their contents. This was done as an alternative to hiding or disabling the content entirely. Thanks, GitHub Support Russians support freedom of speech that much.
- smsm42 8y agoI see why they might have done it, but I suspect we've already seen what's coming next. Limiting access to code used by very notorious and controversial groups. Limiting access to code written by very notorious and outrageous people. Limiting access to code produced by somebody who is sympathetic to very notorious and outrageous people. Limiting access to code produced by somebody who once said something controversial on Twitter and the outrage machine decided to dig it up today. Etc. etc. The slope exists, and we already have seen how slippery it is. It always starts with almost 100% clearly bad cases. It rarely just ends there. P.S. and yes, before the obligatory "it's a private business" comments come in, I know I can build my own Internet and avoid all this. Thanks for reminding.
- eqdw 8y agoMy understanding of the deepfakes timeline: 1) One day somebody posts a handful of really obviously faked janky looking porn videos. We all have a good laugh, briefly imagine the possibilities, and then move on 2) Like 3 weeks later, every social media platform explicitly bans this dumb toy that wasn't even any good 3) a year or so passes 4) Now governments are passing dramatic legal bans on these things, and there's all kinds of shady things happening. Like, this is the first instance of this kind of public restriction I have _ever_ seen on github. So: which major news events were completed fabricated?