18 ms·

GitHub blocked me and all my libraries

350 points by taion 7y ago

jakearmitage 7y ago
Stallman warned all of us. No one wanted to listen.
- zelphirkalt 7y ago
  It's sometimes incredible how far-sighted some of his talk is. Unfortunately most people only ever learn after the fact.
- coleifer 7y ago
  Yes, and the trend towards codes of conduct and ethical licenses are producing projects ripe for this sort of hijacking.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
    And ESR warned us of that. Although I can understand that signal getting lost in the noise that is ESR's writing, unfortunately.
    - djsumdog 7y ago
      I had to look that up. ESR is Eric Steven Raymond.
    - catalogia 7y ago
      Both ESR and RMS have warned against such "ethical" licenses. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-freedom-to-run.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-freed... Bruce Perens has as well: https://perens.com/2019/10/12/invasion-of-the-ethical-licenses/ https://perens.com/2019/10/12/invasion-of-the-ethical-licens...
    - tbyehl 7y ago
      You hardly need to read between the lines to understand why ESR is terrified of codes of conduct. Or you can find that DF story where ESR's creepiness towards women was misattributed to RMS.
- drummer 7y ago
  Now this is a comment worthy of being pinned.
saber6 7y ago
He had a very, very valid point until he devolved into referencing Japanese-American internment and Nazi Germany.
- cmckn 7y ago
  1000%. I understand being angry about this, but get a grip.
- MockObject 7y ago
  He still has a valid point. He simply expressed it hyperbolically. But intelligent people can ignore his emotional state and focus on the actual issue.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
rkeene2 7y ago
Fossil [0] makes this situation a bit better since you can always clone the entire repository. It wouldn't help with authoritative URLs to resources if the host went away, though -- that kind of infrastructure would still need to be planned. I offer free Fossil hosting [1]. [0] https://fossil-scm.org/ https://fossil-scm.org/ [1] http://chiselapp.com/ http://chiselapp.com/
- appleflaxen 7y ago
  > ...since you can always clone the entire repository. how is that different than github?
  - rkeene2 7y ago
    With GitHub, you are only cloning part of the repository -- you are missing the Wiki (which is a separate repository), Issues, Milestones, Release Artifacts, etc
    - IshKebab 7y ago
      The repository is just the code. All the other stuff is part of the project, not the repository. You're right. Just getting the terminology wrong.
      - rkeene2 7y ago
        In Fossil it's all just part of the repository :-)
  - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
    It might be better to say that you can clone the project, including ex. issues, as a single thing, rather than just the "repo" of code
    - appleflaxen 7y ago
      ahh. that's clear. thank you!
wolco 7y ago
If I had software used by thousands I would ask them to contact github via twitter or any employees. Then I would self host. If still angry then I would create a liceasd that doesn't allow Microsoft/github/etc to use your product in anyway. Share to lib users with self hosted link.
- ozten 7y ago
  Good point, this reinforces the importance of owning your relationship to your users outside of the platforms that we are just share cropping on.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  > If still angry then I would create a liceasd that doesn't allow Microsoft/github/etc to use your product in anyway. Share to lib users with self hosted link. This would actually cause your project to no longer be open source. AGPLv3 is probably the closest you can get, forcing anyone who uses your project, even on a server and not distributed to end-users, to contribute all changes back.
  - wolco 7y ago
    I support the concept of open source including some restrictions. It would be open source depending on user/application. We've seen some open source depending on usage liceases (can't be used in a sass, you can't sue us clauses). It does feel like a poison pill that would reduce usage. But maybe it's worth it.
  - wizzwizz4 7y ago
    > forcing anyone who uses your project, even on a server and not distributed to end-users, to contribute all changes back. Actually, it doesn't quite do that. It treats "providing access to via a network" as "distribution", and requires the source to be provided, under the AGPL, to users who ask. For example, if Hacker News was AGPL'd (and not copyright owned by Y Combinator), I could ask Y Combinator for the source and they'd have to give it to me… but they wouldn't have to provide the original developers their patches. If, say, this AGPL Hacker News was only available to people within Y Combinator, I wouldn't be entitled to receiving a copy of the source from the company. I'm not a user, you see. (Notably, the original developers aren't entitled to Y Combinator's fork, unless they're also being provided the software.) But I could ask a friendly employee for a copy, and they could get it for me, and then I could give it to anybody who wanted it as per normal GPL rules.
pjc50 7y ago
We don't know why he was banned, and it's a real problem that you can't get an explanation out of a company in situations like this, but there's a hint: > “If you accessed GitHub.com while you were visiting Iran, North Korea, Syria, or Crimea, please tell us why you used GitHub.com.” He may have tripped over the US government sanctions. I also feel that it's poor taste for a Russian living in an authoritarian state to liken github to the gulag.
- tasogare 7y ago
  > I also feel that it's poor taste for a Russian living in an authoritarian state to liken github to the gulag. I'm not saying that to defend Russia, but here the authoritarian state imposing unilateral sanctions to individuals and companies of a few selected states is the US... This is also sometimes done against EU companies as well. This needs to change.
- vbezhenar 7y ago
  Or may be Github geodata bugged and registered him in Crimea. May be your US provider will buy IP block which was used in Crimea yesterday and you'll get banned for the same reason. Fascinating.
  - kube-system 7y ago
    My US provider is not going to get an IP block from RIPE NCC. They get theirs from ARIN.
- mcguire 7y ago
  Judging by the questions, that is exactly what he has done, and judging by his answers, he knows it but wishes to make GitHub appear to be at fault for reasons of his own.
- Joker_vD 7y ago
  So. Say, there is a person living in Crimea, so supposedly they're oppressed by the Russian state, suffer from its illegal governing bodies and long for the day Crimea is reunited with Ukraine once again. And the international community and the US, in particular, famous for their human rights championship, do provide their support and compassion to this person, for instance, by prohibiting them from having business or semi-business transactions or relations with any commercial companies and firms under their jurisdiction. Wait, what? The ire at such situation can be of basically of two forms: "I wish this damned government didn't antagonize the rest of the world", and "I wish those bloody foregners didn't antagonize this country". And if the person doesn't actually suffer from any repressions from the occupying country, the first raction is unlikely, especially after 6 years of being surrounded by the state propaganda.
itcrowd 7y ago
So .. one user gets banned for unclear reasons, Github doesn't reply within a week and somehow Github is now the equivalent of the German Nazi party? I understand: it's frustrating and maybe undeserved that a service has banned you. But comparisons to the Second World War, concentration camps and the treatment of Jews by Nazi Germany are really, really not appropriate. Take a breath.
- honest_tovarich 7y ago
  The fact Github banned people from certain countries is in fact very similar to Nazi Germany. People in first world countries don't really care about the struggles of other people in less wealthy countries, we just pretend we do. Those people should be able to access all the services that are provided for free to us.
- commandersaki 7y ago
  The ban was an overreaction. There is no need to ban the entire account and close virtually all lines of communication over something miniscule. The response is proportionate.
honest_tovarich 7y ago
Yeah, tovarich, is the hypocrisy of big tech companies, banning people from their services, not long ago Adobe banned Venezuelans accounts, looks like people from certain countries are 3rd class citizens. You can alternatively host your own GitLab repo. I'm truly sorry this happened to you.
walclick 7y ago
what happens with forked or cloned projects? will they be blocked too?
- techntoke 7y ago
  If a clone is a mirror, then it will simply stop mirroring. Forks will not be blocked unless the reason had to do with the content, but I'm sure they can block those too.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
throwaway322382 7y ago
Besides lower popularity, is there any downside to moving everything to GitLab?
techntoke 7y ago
This is why centralized SCM is a bad idea. Backing up GitHub issues, etc is a pain and isn't 1:1 portable to other platforms. Issue tracking and SCM features needs to live inside the Git repo or at least in a decentralized app. Git is supposed to be decentralized by nature. Everyone is so content with GitHub and GitLab that not much innovation has happened for decentralizing SCM as a whole. They have so much money and resources that they can blackhole anyone who says otherwise.
- olah_1 7y ago
  Here's just one project trying to make a decentralized github. https://radicle.xyz/ https://radicle.xyz/
seveibar 7y ago
The author is Russian and has numerous seemingly popular github repositories. They question Github's decision to ban their account without giving them any reasoning and illustrates how the open source community has lost a lot of value as a result of the comment/asset removal. The author's comparison to internment camps and other dramatic measures of government suppression seems unfair. Github not providing reasoning is also unfair, but seems to be standard practice among corporations (maybe to help with liability?). The questions Github is asking from the user relate to U.S. OFAC policy, which is how the U.S. enforces economic sanctions. Basically if you've done business with North Korea or a number of other flagged entities you can be held liable criminally or more often for huge fines. I don't know how the author triggered whatever automatic suspension mechanism github has in place, but I think github should priorize the author's case given their contribution to the community. I don't think Github is an evil organization. I do think OFAC policy is difficult to enforce and the U.S. gov should make it easier. If Github reported the number of suspensions, who was suspended or explain why a suspension happened I would have more trust in them as a platform.
- kbenson 7y ago
  > Github not providing reasoning is also unfair, but seems to be standard practice among corporations (maybe to help with liability?). Possibly liability, but also to keep people from gaming the system. Hard policy lines about exactly what is and is not okay end up being gamed by people that technically don't violate them but cause all the same problems that the policy was instituted to stop.[1] If the reasoning for the ban is explicitly laid out, but the person doesn't quite meet it through definitive evidence (but possibly easily meets it through a preponderance of circumstantial evidence), that's may indicate someone is gaming the rules. Acting on that person in that case may just lead to a bunch of bad press as people argue over whether it was justified. It's in the company's interest to keep it vague so a defense of that sort is harder to put forth. That's not to say I think this is necessarily good, just that I can see how it came to be somewhat the norm. In a better world, we'd have something more like the legal system, with a case, a defense and offense, an a jury of peers. Unfortunately, that's too time consuming, resource intensive, expensive, and takes control away from the business, so it will never happen. 1: This is easy to do. For example, continuously make statements that are construed as attacks by the group you are targeting, but are less known as attacks outside that group, and feign ignorance when called on it. It polarizes those around, and also causes the targets to become hyper-sensitive to benign statements and causes false-positives, which is more evidence to others that the same group is overreacting, causing more polarization. Open source communities have been ripped apart by this. America seems to be getting ripped apart by this.
fmakunbound 7y ago
If you're hosting your stuff on corporate platforms, like Github, Google (Gmail/etc.) you just have to be Ok with losing access to all your code or data with no notice, explanation or recourse.
- techntoke 7y ago
  People are so content with the status quo and making excuses why they enable these behaviors, it almost reminds me of... oh wait.
- iKevinShah 7y ago
  While I understand the reality, this is just how a lot of us did not imagine Internet should be / would be. It's 2020, we should have some way to connect them instead of hoping the victim's post go viral forcing the "Big ones" to act on that particular case.
  - pdonis 7y ago
    > this is just how a lot of us did not imagine Internet should be / would be That's right, but that's because the way a lot of us imagined this did not involve relying on third parties with other agendas to host cost that we write that others rely on in production. > It's 2020, we should have some way to connect them We do: set up your own hosting for projects that you provide that others rely on in production. Oh, that costs money, you say? First, hosting is cheap these days. Second, if your code is used by so many people, at least some of them will probably be willing to pay for it.
    - yakireev 7y ago
      You make it sound as if it is the guy's fault. Being a software developer is a well-paid job indeed, but that guy was offering (some of) his work for free, and apparently other developers made some use of it. And now you are blaming him for the fact that he was not also paying extra for being able to share his work. As much as I support self-hosting and not relying on third-parties, attitude like this is bullshit.
mmoez 7y ago
Self-host. EOM
- djsumdog 7y ago
  meanwhile, everyone who used your project in the past now has broken builds.
  - jackewiehose 7y ago
    If their build-system depends on external URLs they had that coming.
    - djsumdog 7y ago
      Umm ... requirements.txt and pypi? Sbt/Maven/Gradle and maven/ivy repos? package.json? Unless you setup a local caching, non-deleting, JFrog artifactory for all your dependencies (only jar files are covered in the free version BTW, and there aren't any tools that handle all those repo types in the OSS world), you are going to depend on external URLs. Locally caching dependencies is not trivial.
      - rkeene2 7y ago
        This is why my build systems will only use release tarballs that can be cached. I built HashCache [0][1] to handle caching of these tarballs by their SHA-256, then the build system can fetch from there first to ensure a local mirror is available. My download process sometimes also caches into my home directory (into ~/.local/cache/by-hash/sha256/...) to avoid hitting the network at all if possible. Also, some tools try to download things from the internet as part of the BUILD process. I also disable that using another tool [2]. Combined this really helps in being able to build my software when upstream goes away. [0] http://hashcache.rkeene.org/ http://hashcache.rkeene.org/ [1] https://chiselapp.com/user/rkeene/repository/hashcache/ https://chiselapp.com/user/rkeene/repository/hashcache/ [2] https://chiselapp.com/user/rkeene/repository/bash-drop-network-access/ https://chiselapp.com/user/rkeene/repository/bash-drop-netwo...
- 7y ago
wyldfire 7y ago
> “Flagged”? So this is how you call “disposing of someone” in a “politically correct” manner nowadays — you “flag” them. “The United States flagged 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II”. Whoa!! What an astonishing comparison! Go host your software on gitlab, IPFS, or some other service and please don't bother comparing your experience hosting software with forced internment. > Remind me, GitHub, since when are you Ordnungspolizei? Who exactly granted you the authority to interrogate and police regular people? B...b...but it's their server, their disk space. You granted them the authority by showing up at their doorstep asking for the service.
- rhinoceraptor 7y ago
  GitHub has monopolized open source development. The likelihood of your software being discovered, used or contributed to goes to zero as soon as you host it anywhere but GitHub.
  - surround 7y ago
    That can change.
    - rhinoceraptor 7y ago
      Yes, but it's not even just an end-user problem. Github is taken as assumed all over the place, for example Golang projects often directly download their dependencies from Github.
      - surround 7y ago
        Right, but instead of defeatism, people ought to start self-hosting sooner rather than later.
      - zelphirkalt 7y ago
        That is their problem. They should not rely on Github, especially now, that it is owned by MS.
      - 7y ago
raxxorrax 7y ago
I just hope that people that advocated companies to remove users rot in hell. And if it doesn't exist, they should rot in hell twice. Sorry for the rant, but a lot of platforms have been made significantly worse the last past 5 or so years because of random content moderation. Github was pretty reliable for a long time. oh well... I guess the flaw of code centralization should have warned us.
- risyachka 7y ago
  I mean, if we are talking 1 in a million, it proves nothing. All websites block users for different reasons (including being geographically in regions under US sanctions, in which case they have to block a user according to law, not their wish).
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    The normal site on the net doesn't give a rats ass about sanctions.
grugagag 7y ago
Wow, that interogation form is indeed freaky. I was planning to create some github repos but after this, thanks but no thanks. The US is slowly becoming a police state and it’s taking up the internet with it.
- risyachka 7y ago
  It's not US, its the man is from a country under lots of international sanctions (for good reasons), that may have been to places with even more sanctions. The US laws prevent companies from doing business with those regions (again, for good reason). So GitHub actions are probably based on some intel, and they blocked account only to comply with lay and not to get fined. I mean, with all you know the man could have been to Crimea.
  - tartoran 7y ago
    What if he was simply an independent FOSS dev coding from say, Moscow? How is the flag fair for that? With no explainations? There are a lot of good “international” devs coding away from Russia because thats where they live (and many of them oppose their cretin leader). What are we doing here, random flagging them? Why not simply ban these countries so at least these people don’t waste their resources... I am not sure if it is possible but (not FOSS) competition could use this flagging mechanism to prop their own business. I’d say this type of brhaviour from GH is somewhat abusive. Had they given an explaination that such and such rule was violated I’d be a lot more forgiving... Just my 2c
    - madeofpalk 7y ago
      Its unfortunate, but that's not Github's problem. If the Government imposes sanctions against other nations, companies have to follow them.
      - tartoran 7y ago
        How about some explanation? I understand why they’d do this but no explainatin is quite unfair and honestly dissapointing for the community
0ld 7y ago
i could stand behind this rant until unexpectedly (or expectedly - this from a russian after all?) stumbling upon this: > Flagged”? So this is how you call “disposing of someone” in a “politically correct” manner nowadays — you “flag” them. “The United States flagged 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II”. Yeah, much friendlier than: “The United States forcefully relocated and incarcerated in concentration camps about 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II”.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ncmncm 7y ago
  What, the US imprisoning American citizens on no charges and without legal recourse or due process is not mentionable? It happened in living memory. Yes, Russia did it to uncounted millions of their own, and actually murdered many millions of those, for decades. That does not excuse US behavior: both are indefensible. The US has, at this moment, more people imprisoned than any other country. The US doesn't seem to harvest their organs, at least on a grand scale, but does engage in slavery: products stamped "made in USA" are now quite likely to be produced by enforced prison labor, particularly in Louisiana. Solitary confinement for months or years on end, and withholding medical treatment are certified torture methods, and routine practice in US prisons. The American Way is to have corporations do it under contract, somehow absolving government officials of responsibility.
  - samatman 7y ago
    Comparing getting your user account suspended to a war crime is histrionic.
    - Nuzzerino 7y ago
      You do realize that in the case of Github, an account suspension may prevent one from earning a reasonable living with the skills that they have? There are no social safety nets in some parts of the world, so being broke may be just as bad as <insert bad thing done by a government>.
surround 7y ago
It always struck me as ironic that Github itself isn’t open source.
FrankieWest 7y ago
The Germans flagged 6 million jews during ww2. They should have self hosted
jpz 7y ago
It seems that it only tells half the story. Perhaps he was pushing code from his holiday in Crimea and his IP got tagged. Something like that would possibly do it.
- yakireev 7y ago
  Let's assume he did. Now what? Does it make the situation better for Microsoft? User is banned, repos are lost, comments and issues are lost, with no explanation whatsoever. Microsoft is covering its ass, while we all are at loss. There's no reason for you or me to be supportive of Microsoft in this situation.
  - x0x0 7y ago
    Microsoft simply isn't going to pick a fight with the US government. At least direct your anger at the right party.
    - yakireev 7y ago
      Microsoft could have handled the situation much better. Silently 404ing all repos while providing no communication and explanations is not a legal requirement.
  - yuretz 7y ago
    Well, indeed there is. Shouldn't Russians share some collective responsibility for their government actions? I guess, in this case this was this specific person's share of responsibility.
    - yakireev 7y ago
      First, since when collective responsibility became a good thing? Being responsible for things you never did is not something you want for yourself, so why want it for others? Second, it's not only that guy who's at loss, it's also all the people who used or might use his software. Are those people responsible for Russian government's actions too?
aasasd 7y ago
> complain about centralized corporate content-hosting > post that on Medium Hoo boy.
beatrobot 7y ago
Can't GitHub add a popup asking, "We detected you are in a restricted country, are you sure you want to login?" or just block logging in without locking up the account?
kube-system 7y ago
Good luck with Gitlab, they have to follow the same laws.
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  How does that apply to self hosting? Are they obliged to push changes to their repo that implement the policy they are obligated themselves to follow? Are you obliged not to fork and remove such changes? How?
unnouinceput 7y ago
Quote: "...the same isn’t true for all your other intellectual property in the form..." Sorry, it's not your intellectual property anymore, it belongs to Microsoft now. People tend to forget Microsoft owns GitHub nowadays, and also tend to forget Microsoft is a corporation.
Animats 7y ago
We need a system where repositories are duplicated in different political jurisdictions that don't get along with each other. A copy in the US, a copy in the EU, a copy in China, a copy in Russia, a copy in Kenya, a copy in Japan, a copy in Vietnam, a copy in Iran. With hashes on a blockchain every few days to check for tampering.
- a_t48 7y ago
  You don't need a separate blockchain (for the actual code stored in the repo). Git already provides hashing. How do you propose to deal with merges across half a dozen different repositories, though?
  - clarry 7y ago
    Don't merge, just mirror. Sign everything. If a mirror finds fresh data on another host, with signatures that check out, grab it.
    - a_t48 7y ago
      What happens when two different hosts merge at the same time? ...I guess that's what the blockchain is for - to mediate conflicts. Feels gross to me, though.
      - clarry 7y ago
        Well you can come up with any number of solutions with various trade-offs. One obvious choice is that there's only one maintainer doing merges -- if they sign and push different content to different repos, it's a problem of their own making. So unless they screw up, there's no need to worry. Other than that, you could give priority to any change based on e.g. its timestamp or hash. Sounds arbitrary? Yes, but such is life. If two people push a branch to be merged simultaneously to a repo where everything is merged to master after rebasing, one of them (depending on luck) is going to find that their commits landed while the other soons finds out that they need to rebase and try again. In a scenario with multiple mirrors, you'd obviously want to try to use the same repo when possible, but if you don't, it'll take a little longer for you to find out that your stuff was overruled by changes in another mirror.
Paul-ish 7y ago
> While git version control itself makes sure that you don’t lose your code when GitHub, Inc. decides to block you, the same isn’t true for all your other intellectual property in the form of numerous comments you’ve posted in issues/pull-requests/commits/etc (including your employer’s paid repos). Companies that pay for GitHub and have remote workers that may trip up the detection system should take note of this situation. They could lose their employees work in an instant.
drummer 7y ago
Yeah shadowbanning is not cool, and it is still used here on HN. This shows once again that you cannot trust these corporations with your information and sure as fuck not with your livelihood. Facebook, patreon, google, youtube, twitter, apple, etc. Ironically even medium where this article is posted, as they regularly shadowban accounts.
- xrendan 7y ago
  What GitHub did wasn't shadowbanning though. They had a banner for him that said the account was flagged. Should they have sent an email? Absolutely, but that's not a shadowban.
- samatman 7y ago
  HN has showdead and vouching, which imho substantially reduce the negative effects of shadowbanning. I run showdead, and most shadowbanned accounts deserve it. I also rescue the occasional comment from the grave. Do the moderators un-shadowban users if they get enough vouched comments? No idea, but they do have enough information to do so.
  - derekp7 7y ago
    I'll often come across shadow banned comments, and when I look at the author's post history (back to the first dead comment, plus a few pages of comments before) I really don't see anything wrong. Is it because the comment(s) that got them banned have been removed? When I run across such an account, should I email an HN mod to investigate? I wouldn't mind doing that, but I've tried before and never got a reply back -- so not sure what the outcome was.
    - emilfihlman 7y ago
      It's possibly because of a single comment (out of n, where n is large) of disagreeing with the crowd or saying something unpleasant or a mod powertripping. It's stupid as fuck. Reddit is also plagued by it.
wespiser_2018 7y ago
This is a great illustration of the problems of corporatization for online content providers. A similar story is playing out over at YouTube, where channel's, and people's livelihood's, are facing increased surveillance and pasteurization for the sake of advertiser friendliness. As for this case, I don't know what's going on, and can't tell from the article, but a user 1) from Russia, 2) with a "drug name" in their handle is not the picture perfect story of corporation friendly. Too bad for his users!
correct_horse 7y ago
A practice resembling this is featured in dystopian literature and has been written about since at least the early 1900s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka#%22Kafkaesque%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka#%22Kafkaesque%22
kujaomega 7y ago
I have tried to access his account and seems to be working now: https://github.com/catamphetamine https://github.com/catamphetamine. And It's also indexed on github: https://github.com/search?q=catamphetamine https://github.com/search?q=catamphetamine
PaulDavisThe1st 7y ago
However many years ago it was that sourceforge capsized, I swore to myself that I'd never give a 3rd party control of my source code repository (or bug tracker or ...). I still use github because it is convenient for many other people, but it is always a mirror of the canonical repository, which runs under my control on AWS (and is fully replicated locally). I understand the convenience, but once burned, twice shy: I'm never going to rely on 3rd party code hosting services ever again.
wishinghand 7y ago
The quote from the article: > Also, apparently, all my comments in all issues in all other repos have instantly disappeared for anyone other than me, and some of those comments contained a lot of really useful and valuable information/knowledge/solutions Reminded me of something: I was following a thread in a Github issue, received an email that had a useful answer but was hard to read due to gmail not formatting code well. I let it be and the next day went to the thread and the comment was nowhere to be found. I wonder if something similar happened.
kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
So why did zbetcheckin demand that capslang come down? Why does abuse.ch get to dictate to other countries based on hearsay?
FpUser 7y ago
I've never kept my repos on Github, Gitlab and the likes. I just host them on my own and rented servers, Sure I loose on that cumulative effect of a single place that has everything but then I do not depend on the whims of some company.
rodgerd 7y ago
Imagine my surprise when, after all the hyperbole and claims to have "no idea" what could have triggered it, it turns out he's engaged in an Internet-scale harassment campaign of another person. I look forward to the pearl-clutchers in the thread walking back their overheated rhetoric.
- yuretz 7y ago
  Do you have a link?
  - rodgerd 7y ago
    Read down to the bottom of his spiel; he acknowledges that the ban is rooted in his participation in an Internet harassment mob.
  - qtplatypus 7y ago
    In the story. “Ain’t no problem, bruh!”, — I thought. You know, we developers should stand for each other. Only that I’m more used to GitHub so I’ve posted a (now deleted) issue rather than a tweet. The issue was titled “You’re a [funny-word]” where [funny-word] was a set of latin characters reminding a transliterated Russian half-offensive word for “gay”, while not being equal to that specific word. Think of something like “mother-lucker” or “mother-trucker”.
maallooc 7y ago
Without even looking at the article I guessed he was a javascript developer. And I was right.
einpoklum 7y ago
GitHub must not be able to remove user accounts nor individual repositories without: 1. Demonstrable just cause for removal, fully communicated to the removed user. 2. Due process - before and after the removal (some kind of prior notice, ability to challenge claims against you, adjudication mechanism, appeal mechanism etc.) 3. Community notification about the removal - no axing accounts in secret.
HaoZeke 7y ago
Great post. Especially the addendum about github being super weird about personal information. Wish it wasn't on medium though! They're worse than github.
ph2082 7y ago
> "Or maybe I’ve called someone a moron on the internet recently? (spoiler: that finally turned out to be the case)" That doesn't look like reason for blocking an account and all the repository. Probably Github should delete such comment and send email to poster to repost comment without using any offensive words (As per their dictionary).
- peglasaurus 7y ago
  Draconian/authoritarian responses are becoming more common online. Offline in meatspace people are also becoming more guarded and wanting bans for all sorts of slights. These are not good signs for society in general.
  - ph2082 7y ago
    Yeah. Good old camaraderie is dying.
rs23296008n1 7y ago
I'm sensing there is a lot more to this story. Related note while we're banning people for word selection: Does github realise that "git" has a pejorative association? Its not actually a polite word. If you were to call me a "git" in comments on any of my projects it would be an automatic code-of-conduct violation. You'd get one very specific warning about abusive word use then you'd be blocked. Are they aware of this? Its always made me laugh. They've basically put a minor league swear/offensive word in the name of their corporation. PS Please don't explain why the git tool is named git. Or why github was named. I already know. Just understand that "git" is similar and has as much offensive weight as pointedly calling someone a "worthless idiot". You're actually being deliberately offensive. In some places you would also likely get a punch in the face depending on who you insulted. Its at that level of offensiveness. Different cultures etc.
chriswwweb 7y ago
I'm a bit late to the party ... just wanted to say that his account seems to be back (don't know why): https://github.com/catamphetamine?tab=repositories https://github.com/catamphetamine?tab=repositories
luord 7y ago
I have the feeling that this article is gonna be deleted from medium for including the f word. Though that might just be my hatred for medium and its walls talking.
peter_d_sherman 7y ago
If I ever run an Internet company in the future, we will always have an old-fashioned customer support telephone line, where you will always be able to talk to a live human being, where they will actually try to assist you, not give you B.S. answers nor hide behind corporate policy nor give you the run-around. Even if an account is ever closed due to a terms of service or policy violation and the issue could not be resolved through customer service channels (exceedingly unlikely but possible) -- you and every other user would still be able to download YOUR DATA from YOUR ACCOUNT, even if the account was closed or suspended... It's amazing what passes for both "customer service" and software "usability" these days...

350 points by taion 7y ago

jakearmitage 7y ago

Stallman warned all of us. No one wanted to listen.

zelphirkalt 7y ago
It's sometimes incredible how far-sighted some of his talk is. Unfortunately most people only ever learn after the fact.
coleifer 7y ago
Yes, and the trend towards codes of conduct and ethical licenses are producing projects ripe for this sort of hijacking.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  And ESR warned us of that. Although I can understand that signal getting lost in the noise that is ESR's writing, unfortunately.
  - djsumdog 7y ago
    I had to look that up. ESR is Eric Steven Raymond.
  - catalogia 7y ago
    Both ESR and RMS have warned against such "ethical" licenses. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-freedom-to-run.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-freed... Bruce Perens has as well: https://perens.com/2019/10/12/invasion-of-the-ethical-licenses/ https://perens.com/2019/10/12/invasion-of-the-ethical-licens...
  - tbyehl 7y ago
    You hardly need to read between the lines to understand why ESR is terrified of codes of conduct. Or you can find that DF story where ESR's creepiness towards women was misattributed to RMS.
drummer 7y ago
Now this is a comment worthy of being pinned.

saber6 7y ago

He had a very, very valid point until he devolved into referencing Japanese-American internment and Nazi Germany.

cmckn 7y ago
1000%. I understand being angry about this, but get a grip.
MockObject 7y ago
He still has a valid point. He simply expressed it hyperbolically. But intelligent people can ignore his emotional state and focus on the actual issue.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

rkeene2 7y ago

Fossil [0] makes this situation a bit better since you can always clone the entire repository. It wouldn't help with authoritative URLs to resources if the host went away, though -- that kind of infrastructure would still need to be planned. I offer free Fossil hosting [1]. [0] https://fossil-scm.org/ https://fossil-scm.org/ [1] http://chiselapp.com/ http://chiselapp.com/

appleflaxen 7y ago
> ...since you can always clone the entire repository. how is that different than github?
- rkeene2 7y ago
  With GitHub, you are only cloning part of the repository -- you are missing the Wiki (which is a separate repository), Issues, Milestones, Release Artifacts, etc
  - IshKebab 7y ago
    The repository is just the code. All the other stuff is part of the project, not the repository. You're right. Just getting the terminology wrong.
    - rkeene2 7y ago
      In Fossil it's all just part of the repository :-)
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  It might be better to say that you can clone the project, including ex. issues, as a single thing, rather than just the "repo" of code
  - appleflaxen 7y ago
    ahh. that's clear. thank you!

wolco 7y ago

If I had software used by thousands I would ask them to contact github via twitter or any employees. Then I would self host. If still angry then I would create a liceasd that doesn't allow Microsoft/github/etc to use your product in anyway. Share to lib users with self hosted link.

ozten 7y ago
Good point, this reinforces the importance of owning your relationship to your users outside of the platforms that we are just share cropping on.
djsumdog 7y ago
> If still angry then I would create a liceasd that doesn't allow Microsoft/github/etc to use your product in anyway. Share to lib users with self hosted link. This would actually cause your project to no longer be open source. AGPLv3 is probably the closest you can get, forcing anyone who uses your project, even on a server and not distributed to end-users, to contribute all changes back.
- wolco 7y ago
  I support the concept of open source including some restrictions. It would be open source depending on user/application. We've seen some open source depending on usage liceases (can't be used in a sass, you can't sue us clauses). It does feel like a poison pill that would reduce usage. But maybe it's worth it.
- wizzwizz4 7y ago
  > forcing anyone who uses your project, even on a server and not distributed to end-users, to contribute all changes back. Actually, it doesn't quite do that. It treats "providing access to via a network" as "distribution", and requires the source to be provided, under the AGPL, to users who ask. For example, if Hacker News was AGPL'd (and not copyright owned by Y Combinator), I could ask Y Combinator for the source and they'd have to give it to me… but they wouldn't have to provide the original developers their patches. If, say, this AGPL Hacker News was only available to people within Y Combinator, I wouldn't be entitled to receiving a copy of the source from the company. I'm not a user, you see. (Notably, the original developers aren't entitled to Y Combinator's fork, unless they're also being provided the software.) But I could ask a friendly employee for a copy, and they could get it for me, and then I could give it to anybody who wanted it as per normal GPL rules.

pjc50 7y ago

We don't know why he was banned, and it's a real problem that you can't get an explanation out of a company in situations like this, but there's a hint: > “If you accessed GitHub.com while you were visiting Iran, North Korea, Syria, or Crimea, please tell us why you used GitHub.com.” He may have tripped over the US government sanctions. I also feel that it's poor taste for a Russian living in an authoritarian state to liken github to the gulag.

tasogare 7y ago
> I also feel that it's poor taste for a Russian living in an authoritarian state to liken github to the gulag. I'm not saying that to defend Russia, but here the authoritarian state imposing unilateral sanctions to individuals and companies of a few selected states is the US... This is also sometimes done against EU companies as well. This needs to change.
vbezhenar 7y ago
Or may be Github geodata bugged and registered him in Crimea. May be your US provider will buy IP block which was used in Crimea yesterday and you'll get banned for the same reason. Fascinating.
- kube-system 7y ago
  My US provider is not going to get an IP block from RIPE NCC. They get theirs from ARIN.
mcguire 7y ago
Judging by the questions, that is exactly what he has done, and judging by his answers, he knows it but wishes to make GitHub appear to be at fault for reasons of his own.
Joker_vD 7y ago
So. Say, there is a person living in Crimea, so supposedly they're oppressed by the Russian state, suffer from its illegal governing bodies and long for the day Crimea is reunited with Ukraine once again. And the international community and the US, in particular, famous for their human rights championship, do provide their support and compassion to this person, for instance, by prohibiting them from having business or semi-business transactions or relations with any commercial companies and firms under their jurisdiction. Wait, what? The ire at such situation can be of basically of two forms: "I wish this damned government didn't antagonize the rest of the world", and "I wish those bloody foregners didn't antagonize this country". And if the person doesn't actually suffer from any repressions from the occupying country, the first raction is unlikely, especially after 6 years of being surrounded by the state propaganda.

itcrowd 7y ago

So .. one user gets banned for unclear reasons, Github doesn't reply within a week and somehow Github is now the equivalent of the German Nazi party? I understand: it's frustrating and maybe undeserved that a service has banned you. But comparisons to the Second World War, concentration camps and the treatment of Jews by Nazi Germany are really, really not appropriate. Take a breath.

honest_tovarich 7y ago
The fact Github banned people from certain countries is in fact very similar to Nazi Germany. People in first world countries don't really care about the struggles of other people in less wealthy countries, we just pretend we do. Those people should be able to access all the services that are provided for free to us.
commandersaki 7y ago
The ban was an overreaction. There is no need to ban the entire account and close virtually all lines of communication over something miniscule. The response is proportionate.

honest_tovarich 7y ago

Yeah, tovarich, is the hypocrisy of big tech companies, banning people from their services, not long ago Adobe banned Venezuelans accounts, looks like people from certain countries are 3rd class citizens. You can alternatively host your own GitLab repo. I'm truly sorry this happened to you.

walclick 7y ago

what happens with forked or cloned projects? will they be blocked too?

techntoke 7y ago
If a clone is a mirror, then it will simply stop mirroring. Forks will not be blocked unless the reason had to do with the content, but I'm sure they can block those too.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

throwaway322382 7y ago

Besides lower popularity, is there any downside to moving everything to GitLab?

techntoke 7y ago

This is why centralized SCM is a bad idea. Backing up GitHub issues, etc is a pain and isn't 1:1 portable to other platforms. Issue tracking and SCM features needs to live inside the Git repo or at least in a decentralized app. Git is supposed to be decentralized by nature. Everyone is so content with GitHub and GitLab that not much innovation has happened for decentralizing SCM as a whole. They have so much money and resources that they can blackhole anyone who says otherwise.

olah_1 7y ago
Here's just one project trying to make a decentralized github. https://radicle.xyz/ https://radicle.xyz/

seveibar 7y ago

The author is Russian and has numerous seemingly popular github repositories. They question Github's decision to ban their account without giving them any reasoning and illustrates how the open source community has lost a lot of value as a result of the comment/asset removal. The author's comparison to internment camps and other dramatic measures of government suppression seems unfair. Github not providing reasoning is also unfair, but seems to be standard practice among corporations (maybe to help with liability?). The questions Github is asking from the user relate to U.S. OFAC policy, which is how the U.S. enforces economic sanctions. Basically if you've done business with North Korea or a number of other flagged entities you can be held liable criminally or more often for huge fines. I don't know how the author triggered whatever automatic suspension mechanism github has in place, but I think github should priorize the author's case given their contribution to the community. I don't think Github is an evil organization. I do think OFAC policy is difficult to enforce and the U.S. gov should make it easier. If Github reported the number of suspensions, who was suspended or explain why a suspension happened I would have more trust in them as a platform.

kbenson 7y ago
> Github not providing reasoning is also unfair, but seems to be standard practice among corporations (maybe to help with liability?). Possibly liability, but also to keep people from gaming the system. Hard policy lines about exactly what is and is not okay end up being gamed by people that technically don't violate them but cause all the same problems that the policy was instituted to stop.[1] If the reasoning for the ban is explicitly laid out, but the person doesn't quite meet it through definitive evidence (but possibly easily meets it through a preponderance of circumstantial evidence), that's may indicate someone is gaming the rules. Acting on that person in that case may just lead to a bunch of bad press as people argue over whether it was justified. It's in the company's interest to keep it vague so a defense of that sort is harder to put forth. That's not to say I think this is necessarily good, just that I can see how it came to be somewhat the norm. In a better world, we'd have something more like the legal system, with a case, a defense and offense, an a jury of peers. Unfortunately, that's too time consuming, resource intensive, expensive, and takes control away from the business, so it will never happen. 1: This is easy to do. For example, continuously make statements that are construed as attacks by the group you are targeting, but are less known as attacks outside that group, and feign ignorance when called on it. It polarizes those around, and also causes the targets to become hyper-sensitive to benign statements and causes false-positives, which is more evidence to others that the same group is overreacting, causing more polarization. Open source communities have been ripped apart by this. America seems to be getting ripped apart by this.

fmakunbound 7y ago

If you're hosting your stuff on corporate platforms, like Github, Google (Gmail/etc.) you just have to be Ok with losing access to all your code or data with no notice, explanation or recourse.

techntoke 7y ago
People are so content with the status quo and making excuses why they enable these behaviors, it almost reminds me of... oh wait.
iKevinShah 7y ago
While I understand the reality, this is just how a lot of us did not imagine Internet should be / would be. It's 2020, we should have some way to connect them instead of hoping the victim's post go viral forcing the "Big ones" to act on that particular case.
- pdonis 7y ago
  > this is just how a lot of us did not imagine Internet should be / would be That's right, but that's because the way a lot of us imagined this did not involve relying on third parties with other agendas to host cost that we write that others rely on in production. > It's 2020, we should have some way to connect them We do: set up your own hosting for projects that you provide that others rely on in production. Oh, that costs money, you say? First, hosting is cheap these days. Second, if your code is used by so many people, at least some of them will probably be willing to pay for it.
  - yakireev 7y ago
    You make it sound as if it is the guy's fault. Being a software developer is a well-paid job indeed, but that guy was offering (some of) his work for free, and apparently other developers made some use of it. And now you are blaming him for the fact that he was not also paying extra for being able to share his work. As much as I support self-hosting and not relying on third-parties, attitude like this is bullshit.

mmoez 7y ago

Self-host. EOM

djsumdog 7y ago
meanwhile, everyone who used your project in the past now has broken builds.
- jackewiehose 7y ago
  If their build-system depends on external URLs they had that coming.
  - djsumdog 7y ago
    Umm ... requirements.txt and pypi? Sbt/Maven/Gradle and maven/ivy repos? package.json? Unless you setup a local caching, non-deleting, JFrog artifactory for all your dependencies (only jar files are covered in the free version BTW, and there aren't any tools that handle all those repo types in the OSS world), you are going to depend on external URLs. Locally caching dependencies is not trivial.
    - rkeene2 7y ago
      This is why my build systems will only use release tarballs that can be cached. I built HashCache [0][1] to handle caching of these tarballs by their SHA-256, then the build system can fetch from there first to ensure a local mirror is available. My download process sometimes also caches into my home directory (into ~/.local/cache/by-hash/sha256/...) to avoid hitting the network at all if possible. Also, some tools try to download things from the internet as part of the BUILD process. I also disable that using another tool [2]. Combined this really helps in being able to build my software when upstream goes away. [0] http://hashcache.rkeene.org/ http://hashcache.rkeene.org/ [1] https://chiselapp.com/user/rkeene/repository/hashcache/ https://chiselapp.com/user/rkeene/repository/hashcache/ [2] https://chiselapp.com/user/rkeene/repository/bash-drop-network-access/ https://chiselapp.com/user/rkeene/repository/bash-drop-netwo...
7y ago

wyldfire 7y ago

> “Flagged”? So this is how you call “disposing of someone” in a “politically correct” manner nowadays — you “flag” them. “The United States flagged 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II”. Whoa!! What an astonishing comparison! Go host your software on gitlab, IPFS, or some other service and please don't bother comparing your experience hosting software with forced internment. > Remind me, GitHub, since when are you Ordnungspolizei? Who exactly granted you the authority to interrogate and police regular people? B...b...but it's their server, their disk space. You granted them the authority by showing up at their doorstep asking for the service.

rhinoceraptor 7y ago
GitHub has monopolized open source development. The likelihood of your software being discovered, used or contributed to goes to zero as soon as you host it anywhere but GitHub.
- surround 7y ago
  That can change.
  - rhinoceraptor 7y ago
    Yes, but it's not even just an end-user problem. Github is taken as assumed all over the place, for example Golang projects often directly download their dependencies from Github.
    - surround 7y ago
      Right, but instead of defeatism, people ought to start self-hosting sooner rather than later.
    - zelphirkalt 7y ago
      That is their problem. They should not rely on Github, especially now, that it is owned by MS.
    - 7y ago

raxxorrax 7y ago

I just hope that people that advocated companies to remove users rot in hell. And if it doesn't exist, they should rot in hell twice. Sorry for the rant, but a lot of platforms have been made significantly worse the last past 5 or so years because of random content moderation. Github was pretty reliable for a long time. oh well... I guess the flaw of code centralization should have warned us.

risyachka 7y ago
I mean, if we are talking 1 in a million, it proves nothing. All websites block users for different reasons (including being geographically in regions under US sanctions, in which case they have to block a user according to law, not their wish).
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  The normal site on the net doesn't give a rats ass about sanctions.

grugagag 7y ago

Wow, that interogation form is indeed freaky. I was planning to create some github repos but after this, thanks but no thanks. The US is slowly becoming a police state and it’s taking up the internet with it.

risyachka 7y ago
It's not US, its the man is from a country under lots of international sanctions (for good reasons), that may have been to places with even more sanctions. The US laws prevent companies from doing business with those regions (again, for good reason). So GitHub actions are probably based on some intel, and they blocked account only to comply with lay and not to get fined. I mean, with all you know the man could have been to Crimea.
- tartoran 7y ago
  What if he was simply an independent FOSS dev coding from say, Moscow? How is the flag fair for that? With no explainations? There are a lot of good “international” devs coding away from Russia because thats where they live (and many of them oppose their cretin leader). What are we doing here, random flagging them? Why not simply ban these countries so at least these people don’t waste their resources... I am not sure if it is possible but (not FOSS) competition could use this flagging mechanism to prop their own business. I’d say this type of brhaviour from GH is somewhat abusive. Had they given an explaination that such and such rule was violated I’d be a lot more forgiving... Just my 2c
  - madeofpalk 7y ago
    Its unfortunate, but that's not Github's problem. If the Government imposes sanctions against other nations, companies have to follow them.
    - tartoran 7y ago
      How about some explanation? I understand why they’d do this but no explainatin is quite unfair and honestly dissapointing for the community

0ld 7y ago

i could stand behind this rant until unexpectedly (or expectedly - this from a russian after all?) stumbling upon this: > Flagged”? So this is how you call “disposing of someone” in a “politically correct” manner nowadays — you “flag” them. “The United States flagged 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II”. Yeah, much friendlier than: “The United States forcefully relocated and incarcerated in concentration camps about 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II”.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ncmncm 7y ago
What, the US imprisoning American citizens on no charges and without legal recourse or due process is not mentionable? It happened in living memory. Yes, Russia did it to uncounted millions of their own, and actually murdered many millions of those, for decades. That does not excuse US behavior: both are indefensible. The US has, at this moment, more people imprisoned than any other country. The US doesn't seem to harvest their organs, at least on a grand scale, but does engage in slavery: products stamped "made in USA" are now quite likely to be produced by enforced prison labor, particularly in Louisiana. Solitary confinement for months or years on end, and withholding medical treatment are certified torture methods, and routine practice in US prisons. The American Way is to have corporations do it under contract, somehow absolving government officials of responsibility.
- samatman 7y ago
  Comparing getting your user account suspended to a war crime is histrionic.
  - Nuzzerino 7y ago
    You do realize that in the case of Github, an account suspension may prevent one from earning a reasonable living with the skills that they have? There are no social safety nets in some parts of the world, so being broke may be just as bad as <insert bad thing done by a government>.

surround 7y ago

It always struck me as ironic that Github itself isn’t open source.

FrankieWest 7y ago

The Germans flagged 6 million jews during ww2. They should have self hosted

jpz 7y ago

It seems that it only tells half the story. Perhaps he was pushing code from his holiday in Crimea and his IP got tagged. Something like that would possibly do it.

yakireev 7y ago
Let's assume he did. Now what? Does it make the situation better for Microsoft? User is banned, repos are lost, comments and issues are lost, with no explanation whatsoever. Microsoft is covering its ass, while we all are at loss. There's no reason for you or me to be supportive of Microsoft in this situation.
- x0x0 7y ago
  Microsoft simply isn't going to pick a fight with the US government. At least direct your anger at the right party.
  - yakireev 7y ago
    Microsoft could have handled the situation much better. Silently 404ing all repos while providing no communication and explanations is not a legal requirement.
- yuretz 7y ago
  Well, indeed there is. Shouldn't Russians share some collective responsibility for their government actions? I guess, in this case this was this specific person's share of responsibility.
  - yakireev 7y ago
    First, since when collective responsibility became a good thing? Being responsible for things you never did is not something you want for yourself, so why want it for others? Second, it's not only that guy who's at loss, it's also all the people who used or might use his software. Are those people responsible for Russian government's actions too?

aasasd 7y ago

> complain about centralized corporate content-hosting > post that on Medium Hoo boy.

beatrobot 7y ago

Can't GitHub add a popup asking, "We detected you are in a restricted country, are you sure you want to login?" or just block logging in without locking up the account?

kube-system 7y ago

Good luck with Gitlab, they have to follow the same laws.

michaelmrose 7y ago
How does that apply to self hosting? Are they obliged to push changes to their repo that implement the policy they are obligated themselves to follow? Are you obliged not to fork and remove such changes? How?

unnouinceput 7y ago

Quote: "...the same isn’t true for all your other intellectual property in the form..." Sorry, it's not your intellectual property anymore, it belongs to Microsoft now. People tend to forget Microsoft owns GitHub nowadays, and also tend to forget Microsoft is a corporation.

Animats 7y ago

We need a system where repositories are duplicated in different political jurisdictions that don't get along with each other. A copy in the US, a copy in the EU, a copy in China, a copy in Russia, a copy in Kenya, a copy in Japan, a copy in Vietnam, a copy in Iran. With hashes on a blockchain every few days to check for tampering.

a_t48 7y ago
You don't need a separate blockchain (for the actual code stored in the repo). Git already provides hashing. How do you propose to deal with merges across half a dozen different repositories, though?
- clarry 7y ago
  Don't merge, just mirror. Sign everything. If a mirror finds fresh data on another host, with signatures that check out, grab it.
  - a_t48 7y ago
    What happens when two different hosts merge at the same time? ...I guess that's what the blockchain is for - to mediate conflicts. Feels gross to me, though.
    - clarry 7y ago
      Well you can come up with any number of solutions with various trade-offs. One obvious choice is that there's only one maintainer doing merges -- if they sign and push different content to different repos, it's a problem of their own making. So unless they screw up, there's no need to worry. Other than that, you could give priority to any change based on e.g. its timestamp or hash. Sounds arbitrary? Yes, but such is life. If two people push a branch to be merged simultaneously to a repo where everything is merged to master after rebasing, one of them (depending on luck) is going to find that their commits landed while the other soons finds out that they need to rebase and try again. In a scenario with multiple mirrors, you'd obviously want to try to use the same repo when possible, but if you don't, it'll take a little longer for you to find out that your stuff was overruled by changes in another mirror.

Paul-ish 7y ago

> While git version control itself makes sure that you don’t lose your code when GitHub, Inc. decides to block you, the same isn’t true for all your other intellectual property in the form of numerous comments you’ve posted in issues/pull-requests/commits/etc (including your employer’s paid repos). Companies that pay for GitHub and have remote workers that may trip up the detection system should take note of this situation. They could lose their employees work in an instant.

drummer 7y ago

Yeah shadowbanning is not cool, and it is still used here on HN. This shows once again that you cannot trust these corporations with your information and sure as fuck not with your livelihood. Facebook, patreon, google, youtube, twitter, apple, etc. Ironically even medium where this article is posted, as they regularly shadowban accounts.

xrendan 7y ago
What GitHub did wasn't shadowbanning though. They had a banner for him that said the account was flagged. Should they have sent an email? Absolutely, but that's not a shadowban.
samatman 7y ago
HN has showdead and vouching, which imho substantially reduce the negative effects of shadowbanning. I run showdead, and most shadowbanned accounts deserve it. I also rescue the occasional comment from the grave. Do the moderators un-shadowban users if they get enough vouched comments? No idea, but they do have enough information to do so.
- derekp7 7y ago
  I'll often come across shadow banned comments, and when I look at the author's post history (back to the first dead comment, plus a few pages of comments before) I really don't see anything wrong. Is it because the comment(s) that got them banned have been removed? When I run across such an account, should I email an HN mod to investigate? I wouldn't mind doing that, but I've tried before and never got a reply back -- so not sure what the outcome was.
  - emilfihlman 7y ago
    It's possibly because of a single comment (out of n, where n is large) of disagreeing with the crowd or saying something unpleasant or a mod powertripping. It's stupid as fuck. Reddit is also plagued by it.

wespiser_2018 7y ago

This is a great illustration of the problems of corporatization for online content providers. A similar story is playing out over at YouTube, where channel's, and people's livelihood's, are facing increased surveillance and pasteurization for the sake of advertiser friendliness. As for this case, I don't know what's going on, and can't tell from the article, but a user 1) from Russia, 2) with a "drug name" in their handle is not the picture perfect story of corporation friendly. Too bad for his users!

correct_horse 7y ago

A practice resembling this is featured in dystopian literature and has been written about since at least the early 1900s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka#%22Kafkaesque%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka#%22Kafkaesque%22

kujaomega 7y ago

I have tried to access his account and seems to be working now: https://github.com/catamphetamine https://github.com/catamphetamine. And It's also indexed on github: https://github.com/search?q=catamphetamine https://github.com/search?q=catamphetamine

PaulDavisThe1st 7y ago

However many years ago it was that sourceforge capsized, I swore to myself that I'd never give a 3rd party control of my source code repository (or bug tracker or ...). I still use github because it is convenient for many other people, but it is always a mirror of the canonical repository, which runs under my control on AWS (and is fully replicated locally). I understand the convenience, but once burned, twice shy: I'm never going to rely on 3rd party code hosting services ever again.

wishinghand 7y ago

The quote from the article: > Also, apparently, all my comments in all issues in all other repos have instantly disappeared for anyone other than me, and some of those comments contained a lot of really useful and valuable information/knowledge/solutions Reminded me of something: I was following a thread in a Github issue, received an email that had a useful answer but was hard to read due to gmail not formatting code well. I let it be and the next day went to the thread and the comment was nowhere to be found. I wonder if something similar happened.

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago

So why did zbetcheckin demand that capslang come down? Why does abuse.ch get to dictate to other countries based on hearsay?

FpUser 7y ago

I've never kept my repos on Github, Gitlab and the likes. I just host them on my own and rented servers, Sure I loose on that cumulative effect of a single place that has everything but then I do not depend on the whims of some company.

rodgerd 7y ago

Imagine my surprise when, after all the hyperbole and claims to have "no idea" what could have triggered it, it turns out he's engaged in an Internet-scale harassment campaign of another person. I look forward to the pearl-clutchers in the thread walking back their overheated rhetoric.

yuretz 7y ago
Do you have a link?
- rodgerd 7y ago
  Read down to the bottom of his spiel; he acknowledges that the ban is rooted in his participation in an Internet harassment mob.
- qtplatypus 7y ago
  In the story. “Ain’t no problem, bruh!”, — I thought. You know, we developers should stand for each other. Only that I’m more used to GitHub so I’ve posted a (now deleted) issue rather than a tweet. The issue was titled “You’re a [funny-word]” where [funny-word] was a set of latin characters reminding a transliterated Russian half-offensive word for “gay”, while not being equal to that specific word. Think of something like “mother-lucker” or “mother-trucker”.

maallooc 7y ago

Without even looking at the article I guessed he was a javascript developer. And I was right.

einpoklum 7y ago

GitHub must not be able to remove user accounts nor individual repositories without: 1. Demonstrable just cause for removal, fully communicated to the removed user. 2. Due process - before and after the removal (some kind of prior notice, ability to challenge claims against you, adjudication mechanism, appeal mechanism etc.) 3. Community notification about the removal - no axing accounts in secret.

HaoZeke 7y ago

Great post. Especially the addendum about github being super weird about personal information. Wish it wasn't on medium though! They're worse than github.

ph2082 7y ago

> "Or maybe I’ve called someone a moron on the internet recently? (spoiler: that finally turned out to be the case)" That doesn't look like reason for blocking an account and all the repository. Probably Github should delete such comment and send email to poster to repost comment without using any offensive words (As per their dictionary).

peglasaurus 7y ago
Draconian/authoritarian responses are becoming more common online. Offline in meatspace people are also becoming more guarded and wanting bans for all sorts of slights. These are not good signs for society in general.
- ph2082 7y ago
  Yeah. Good old camaraderie is dying.

rs23296008n1 7y ago

I'm sensing there is a lot more to this story. Related note while we're banning people for word selection: Does github realise that "git" has a pejorative association? Its not actually a polite word. If you were to call me a "git" in comments on any of my projects it would be an automatic code-of-conduct violation. You'd get one very specific warning about abusive word use then you'd be blocked. Are they aware of this? Its always made me laugh. They've basically put a minor league swear/offensive word in the name of their corporation. PS Please don't explain why the git tool is named git. Or why github was named. I already know. Just understand that "git" is similar and has as much offensive weight as pointedly calling someone a "worthless idiot". You're actually being deliberately offensive. In some places you would also likely get a punch in the face depending on who you insulted. Its at that level of offensiveness. Different cultures etc.

chriswwweb 7y ago

I'm a bit late to the party ... just wanted to say that his account seems to be back (don't know why): https://github.com/catamphetamine?tab=repositories https://github.com/catamphetamine?tab=repositories

luord 7y ago

I have the feeling that this article is gonna be deleted from medium for including the f word. Though that might just be my hatred for medium and its walls talking.

peter_d_sherman 7y ago

If I ever run an Internet company in the future, we will always have an old-fashioned customer support telephone line, where you will always be able to talk to a live human being, where they will actually try to assist you, not give you B.S. answers nor hide behind corporate policy nor give you the run-around. Even if an account is ever closed due to a terms of service or policy violation and the issue could not be resolved through customer service channels (exceedingly unlikely but possible) -- you and every other user would still be able to download YOUR DATA from YOUR ACCOUNT, even if the account was closed or suspended... It's amazing what passes for both "customer service" and software "usability" these days...