8 ms·
Tell HN: GitHub banned me permanently
A few months ago, I’ve made some controversial comments on an open source project discussion that I regret.
Because of these comments, GitHub decided to permanently ban me from the platform.
I can no longer have any account on GitHub, new accounts that I create are hunted and suspended.
I tried appealing the ban, and months have passed with no response from support.
This means that GitHub has effectively suspended my ability to participate in the development community, and also I cannot work as well, because my company uses GitHub, and as soon as GitHub finds out that a account is used by me, the account is immediately banned under the justification that it is being used to sidestep a decision.
I don’t know what to do anymore, I’m afraid, I’m going to be fired if I can’t work, what I’m going to do?
Edit: this thread is flagged, did I do anything wrong? Should I change something, or delete it?
- FiReaNG3L 4y agoVPN, pseudonym, don't reupload any previous projects, avoid contributing to same projects that created problems, behave better in the future? I don't see how they could 'hunt you'.
- siproprio 4y agoI can’t avoid contributing to work projects though.
- bdcravens 4y agoAre they private repos? Also forget everything you know about Github being a social platform. Leave the emojis and memes on your phone.
- siproprio 4y agoYep. Private.
- kazinator 4y agoI don't have a Github account, yet my code is in there with my name on commits. Someone else cloned the repos and pulls from them regularly. The identity working with the code doesn't have to match the code. Are you saying they will ban some "foo" account if it pushes code into a repo where some of the commits are authored by some user "Non Grata <bar@whatever.com>"? Or how does it work?
- cultofmetatron 4y agoget a lawyer
- devrand 4y agoOn what basis is GitHub obligated to provide them service?
- tsimionescu 4y agoIf GH is preventing OP from performing their job for their employer, they could possibly be accused of tortious interference, since they are preventing a legal contract between other parties.
- oneplane 4y agoExcept that the contract already covers misuse and other rules with suspension as a result. But nobody reads the rules, and instead complain when they are applied to them. Inversely, it would be interesting to see what the result is if the ban was not following the contract and terms of use but just the choice of an individual moderator. I don't know how much wiggle room they have to make such choices.
- tsimionescu 4y agoI'm talking about the contract between OP and their employer - that's the contract that it could be argued Github is interfering with. I'm not even remotely close to a lawyer, so I may be completely off.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- siproprio 4y agoUnfortunately I’m in Brazil, GitHub does not operate in Brazil. I’m thinking of suing a distributor or the local Microsoft subsidiary.
- injb 4y agoTry and get your employer to put pressure on them. Your employer pays them.
- bdcravens 4y agoDo they? Many companies do not.
- ch4s3 4y agoI really dislike the trend of locking people out of professional work and banking due to bad or disagreeable speech. I really don't see a world in which this doesn't lead to some sort of backlash that we're all going to wish hadn't happened.
- treeman79 4y agoRead China and Taiwan history to find how such policies end.
- tptacek 4y agoThe "backlash" is that people who care will migrate to other Git hosting providers, of which there are several, at least two of which are HN darlings.
- ch4s3 4y agoParticularly on the banking front, I wouldn't be so sure that this trends only results in people moving to say GitLab.
- bdcravens 4y agoWe need to normalize strict separation between our social and work life.
- version_five 4y agoYeah github is a funny one - I use my personal github for work, and I know many people who do. Whereas if your work uses g-suite or outlook/O365, it's not like you just use your personal google or hotmail (or whatever ms has now) account with it. Separate, and centrally managed would be better, I don't know how we got here
- bdcravens 4y agoTo be fair, Github actually considers it a best practice to only have one account, but I think they really want to keep it all about the social graph.
- JonathanBeuys 4y agoDrama Queen :) Make a new account from a fresh email and you are probably good to go. How would they know it is you? If you use your work email, yeah, you have to ask your employer to give you another one. But is that so hard? If the permaban is appropriate is a different discussion. Without seeing that comment that go you banned, it's impossible to say.
- ch4s3 4y agoThey're probably using among other things IP addresses.
- JonathanBeuys 4y agoYou mean they banned the whole hedge fund OP works for?
- ch4s3 4y agoThey're probably seeing a new account pop up and using the ip range along with some machine info leaked by the browser to pin down the OP, or just the machine info.
- siproprio 4y agoNo. And also they banned me before I started working for the hedge fund. Previously I worked at Siemens, we did not use GitHub, we had a self hosted Gitlab instance.
- SoftTalker 4y agoThat's way too general. An entire company and dozens of people could be behind one IP address.
- ch4s3 4y agoSure, if you only try to use it from work that may make ti a bit harder to pinpoint which is why I said among other things. I think we're all aware that browsers leak information about you and your machine if you aren't careful.
- gw98 4y agoI don't have a solution but I regularly make controversial but polite points on Microsoft's open source projects so this worries me. I am anti-Telemetry and against some of the decisions they have made as a business which have impacted usability of their tools in my sector. Perhaps we should simply not be building organisational dependencies on this product.
- siproprio 4y agoWell, there’s also the point that a person might even regret comments they made! But the ban is forever, there is zero transparency, and no appeal.
- tptacek 4y agoWhy would there be? They're not obligated to provide service to you.
- ch4s3 4y agoSure, but do you really want to live in a world where a 3rd party can block your employment for something you said that is merely offensive but not against the law? Even worse, a ban with no a appeal process that lasts forever.
- tptacek 4y agoAgain: I don't understand why anybody expects GitHub to moderate or adjudicate these dramas. They're a source code hosting site, not a university disciplinary board.
- ch4s3 4y agoI totally agree. I don't even see how they have any upside here, if they do this too much they'll lose business and doing it at all invites people to demand that they keep doing it.
- 4y ago
- SoftTalker 4y agoGet a new phone number. Get a new email address. Use a clean/new browser profile. Create a new github account. If that doesn't work, I'm curious to know how Github connects the accounts to the same person.
- siproprio 4y agoWork and home IP address, possibly. Work domain. Vscode settings possibly.
- SoftTalker 4y agoYes I guess the set of IP addresses used by an account could narrow it down. Use a VPN and perhaps get a different computer or use a different browser in case they've fingerprinted it. That seems like a lot of effort for GitHub to go to but I guess it's not impossible.
- Moto7451 4y agoAnd new SSH key.
- ronsor 4y agoI didn't even know GitHub permanently banned people, notwithstanding users from sanctioned countries.
- makkesk8 4y agoSeems like this could have been better handled by suspending you from commenting and creating issues instead. Best bet is probably appealing like you've tried already.
- paxys 4y agoWhy not use your work email to create a new account? How will they know it is "you"?
- ChildOfChaos 4y agoFingerprinting and tracking cookies from other services, such as Google.
- paxys 4y agoWhat does that even mean? Github cannot access "tracking cookies" from Google. They have very limited data available to them (browser cookies - easily cleanable, IP address – can use VPN or just renew your lease from your ISP, other scripts – block them through a browser extension). If you are getting tracked across the internet by Github – especially as a software engineer – you are simply not trying hard enough.
- ChildOfChaos 4y agoBrowser fingerprinting and the such. I'm not exactly sure how it works. But Reddit has banned my accounts whenever I make a new one and i've deleted all of my Reddit cookies, they somehow find me.
- paxys 4y agoThat's covered by the "browser extension" part. Firefox even does most of the blocking out of the box.
- ev1 4y agoReddit fingerprints you very aggressively. Cookies are not used here. Every single pageload, they scan all your fonts, plugins, etc. They also exfiltrate this data back in ways to prevent blocking, by completely randomizing the API endpoint used to submit it and also not use a dedicated endpoint. For example on each pageload it might send to /submit, or /register, or /friend, it'll just pick a random valid endpoint and "front" that They also continue to do this while you are logged out to tie your IP to the fingerprint. hxxps://www.redditstatic.com/reddit-init.en.4-tSxFR4sOk.js ^F "Arial" Commonly spoofed fingerprints will result in a permanent ban automatically.
- warbler73 4y agoSo expressing regret did not work, it rarely does and is widely considered a sign of weakness. Perhaps it have worked better to double down on your offensive positions, strengthen them, draw in deranged allies. (\s, maybe) Or find an employer that does not require github which is like 99% of employers. Apparently your username is a Portuguese psychological term that means self-reflection, that is cool. But maybe expand outside that.
- siproprio 4y agoThe username is a reference to Jim Incandenza, a character from Infinite Jest.
- ChildOfChaos 4y agoIt's likely tracking cookies from another website they are using. For example Google. I have the same issue with Reddit. I can create an account on a different email and use it fine for a few days and then boom. But I stopped using it on anything I am logged into my Google account with and it's been fine for months. What do you access Github on? I would create a separate user profile for work. Do not log into any services such as Google on it that Github have linked to you and you should be fine.
- wisnoskij 4y agoREddit is crazy. Every thread is filled with [deleted] talking to [deleted]. It seems like most of the throwaway posters get passes, the one posting <= 3 word replies. But all the top well thought out multi paragraph conversations all end up happening between deleted users.
- funchy 4y agoFortunately there's the Pushshift archive, which mitigates that somewhat - replace "reddit.com" in the URL with "unddit.com" or "reveddit.com", these sites will fill in removed comments from this archive.
- biggerChris 4y agoIf you have iOS for Reddit. Check out the traffic and data Reddit collects. Reddit is using blockchain to fingerprint everyone now.
- ChildOfChaos 4y agoIt's crazy, I got banned from a silly subreddit for not really doing anything wrong but fair enough, it's one where the mods are known to be like that. I have a different account that I use on a work computer, I ended up posting in that same subreddit without realising my original account was banned (hadn't logged into it and noticed that was the case) Reddit Perm banned both accounts for ban evasion and for awhile any other account I made, even though i did nothing wrong or didn't post on that subreddit again, until I made sure to use completely clean profiles whenever I want to use reddit. Annoying.
- mytailorisrich 4y agoIMHO, Github is for, well Git repos, so I would understand of the behaviour described resulted in a ban on commenting in other people's Github but a blanket ban seems very heavy-handed. On the other hand, maybe Github has enough on its plate not to bother trying and they just blanket ban on a significant enough red flag.
- tptacek 4y agoWhat was the nature of the controversial comments you made? This thread is starting to spin off into concerns that, for instance, being "anti-telemetry" (like 85% of HN) would get you banned. Is that what you were talking about? Or was it something... more controversial?
- siproprio 4y agoMost of the comments were on the Python extension on the Vscode repo about the quality of the extension, and the trend of moving towards closed source extensions.
- tptacek 4y agoI said 85% of HN people would probably agree with an anti-telemetry argument. Something closer to 95% would agree with "trends towards closed source development tools are bad". My question for you: why do you "regret" these comments? What aren't we hearing about this story right now? This isn't adding up.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- siproprio 4y agoI regret the comments because they caused me to be banned and were disruptive comments that violated the TOS of the service. This type of behavior is to be avoided in the future. The nature of disruption is not 100% clear to me, I asked for clarification but gh did not provide clarification. Mail me at my username at duck.com and I’ll send you the handles of the account, you can search GitHub yourself. Some threads were deleted though.
- imran-iq 4y agoWhat sort of comments did you make? > This means that GitHub has effectively suspended my ability to participate in the development community, and also I cannot work as well, because my company uses GitHub > I don’t know what to do anymore, I’m afraid, I’m going to be fired if I can’t work You'll have to have a discussion with your employer/manager about why you can't use github any more.
- siproprio 4y agoI said in another comment, most of the comments were on the Python extension repo for vscode, about the quality of the extension and feature choices, many people were criticizing as well, and the trend of moving towards closed source.
- funchy 4y agoWhat exactly did you say? I'm intrigued as to what they consider is the tipping point for a lifetime ban. (Partly out of sheer curiosity and partly so I can avoid this myself, as I also have a habit of making somewhat feisty comments, when I'm off my meds and in a bit of an obsessive rage about something.)
- siproprio 4y agoMail me at my username at duck.com and I’ll send you the handles of the account, you can search GitHub yourself. Some threads were deleted though.
- draggedup 4y agoin addition to the steps mentioned, avoid re-using ssh keys
- _jvqe 4y agoLooks like you got a personal moderator on HN too :)
- cultofmetatron 4y agofor real.. why on earth was this flagged??
- manquer 4y agoIf your employer uses only GitHub as git host and not use proprietary extensions like issues, you could simply have your company IT mirror (or do it urself) the repos to another host and setup sync - gitlab can do it - you can do it urself as well with few shell scripts.
- blipvert 4y agoYou can’t figure out a way to get around this? Sheesh, what happened to hackers … ?
- frederate 4y agoSee here the problem with a large centralised provider. People that support non-discrimination should consider moving their repositories to smaller providers.
- wisnoskij 4y agoTalk to your boss, presumably someone else can upload your work. What have you been doing for the months it has been like this?
- user5994461 4y agoI've been trying to find a legal page with legal contact for GitHub since the topic was opened, with no success. The only contact information I can find is this email for privacy requests, which should be good enough, they have to process legal requests they receive privacy@github.com For Microsoft there is this Page https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/policies https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/policies AskCELA@microsoft.com It's not clear from your messages whether you are a subscriber or your organization is a subscriber or both or neither. This affects how to access support and escalate and what claims you may have (your company should have a contract with access to enterprise support if they are customers). It's not reasonable for GitHub to ban you with no justification and no recourse and make you lose your job. Get a lawyer yourself. Or get your company to escalate through their support channel or legal. Warning: We only have one side of the story. If you were posting abusive messages to Github in your name and/or in the company name, on company time. The company may review the messages and may find them abusive too and may fire you.
- siproprio 4y agoSome messages could be viewed as flame/kind of abusive in the sense of criticizing a msft open source project, and they were absolutely not made in the company’s name. Obviously I deeply regret any trouble they could have caused. Msft said it was a GitHub decision, they can’t interfere.
- user5994461 4y agoI would expect MSFT to process official legal requests they receive for themselves and their subsidiaries. EDIT: After more digging, I found the contact, the terms of services here https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-terms-of-service#m-communications-with-github https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t... are linking to this legal section here https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/other-site-policies/guidelines-for-legal-requests-of-user-data#submitting-requests https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/other-site-policies/g... that contains address and email for legal requests. This is incorrectly put in a page "Guidelines for Legal Requests of User Data" but it's not about data request, it's for all legal requests.
- rglover 4y agoPotentially helpful (and a must-have for any hacker bookshelf): https://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Privacy-What-Takes-Disappear/dp/B09W78GW2T https://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Privacy-What-Takes-Disappear/...
- cpach 4y agoThere’s not so much we on HN can do about this. I would suggest that you talk to your manager. If your company pays for GitHub, hopefully they can get in touch with support and/or a sales rep and get it sorted.
- MollyRealized 4y agoI don't wish to be uncompassionate. But I must respectfully note, I think if you're asking for help to circumvent a punishment by GitHub, one needs to know what the nature of the "controversy" was. There are certainly some 'controversial' viewpoints that are vile enough that I'd rather not help someone who had their views. I respect that you're in a sticky wicket. But this seems no different from pre-Internet times when one might lose their job from insulting a close vendor or client your employer works with. Imagine you were in a bar in a one-company town talking about a sexual conquest, only to turn around and see your employer, who reveals your conquest was a 20-something child of theirs. Your choice at that point is pretty much to move. You failed to have the self-awareness that you were in a venue that could affect your livelihood and made a mistake so significant that it can't be retracted or made up. That has happened both off the Internet and on it since time immemorial. The question you are asking now is not how to handle the situation, but how to continue the behavior of disguising yourself to circumvent the punishment. I think that (a) is a question that shows you are not owning up to your behavior (which itself is problematic); and (b) is the wrong strategy to take in this situation, because any circumvention or working outside the GitHub system is _conceivably_ fragile and could collapse at any point, leaving you with the same problem once more. My own suggestion - and I make this with reluctance not knowing whether the 'controversy' is something vile - would be to do two things. Both would be extremely hard. First, I would approach your HR contact, apologize for your conduct with the most remorse you can demonstrate, and see if their person/contact (sales, support, whatever) at GitHub can help you in this situation. Assuming they want to keep you, they can even say to GitHub, "Look, we want to keep this person employed, what can you do for us? Can you provide an ability to commit code without commenting ability?" Etc. Second, pursuing that guidance separately, I would see if anyone here, or any personal or professional contact of yours (cf. LinkedIn, etc.), has any contact at GitHub, or any friend-of-a-friend at GitHub, etc., so that you can speak with someone personally. Certainly the repeated attempts (and deletions) at circumvention likely are not doing anything but racking up points on the 'don't let this guy back in' meter, whether that's automated or not. Lest you think I am unsympathetic, I once made a decision that might've potentially locked me out of a great deal of future employment. I truly believe what made the difference in that situation was that I owned up to my error and looked the wronged parties in the eye and apologized directly. I explained the human factors leading me to make the wrong decision, while explicitly saying it didn't excuse the mistake. Humility is rare enough in today's world that it can oft make a difference. I wish you luck in your resolution of this issue.
- kazinator 4y agoI deleted my Github account right around the Microsoft takeover. Though I don't require any reassurance or more reasons that I did the right thing, thanks for your story. > and as soon as GitHub finds out that a account is used by me How does that happen; what sort of fingerprinting are they going by?
- ghghgfdfgh 4y agoDespite what other people in this thread are saying, I believe the fact that this could occur is a much bigger problem than everyone seems to think. The fact that a company can lock you out of your life with little justification and no opportunity for redemption is astounding to me. A lot of people are saying that GitHub is a company, and that it has absolutely no responsibility to do business with the OP; they had the terms and they didn't follow them, end of story. Now put yourself in their shoes. There is a service that you use for work, and that you are not paying for. You do something wrong with the service - or maybe you didn't, what does it matter? - and you're banned. You are unable to do your job and you might be fired due to this. You ask for an explanation, or at least for a second chance, and are given no response. Who's at fault? The crux of the problem is related to quite a few issues, things that shouldn't be happening. - GitHub basically entirely controls the market for the space it's in, giving the OP little alternatives to get a different job. - GitHub does not have the time to respond to OP's support ticket but they do have the resources to overzealously ban them Why is it like this? Yes, GitHub has no legal obligation to respond to OP, and that's tough luck for them. This really lends itself to the issue of GitHub being essentially a monopoly. It's the same thing with Google, Facebook, etc.; they all offer essential services that nobody else offers, and if they shut you out, it's over for you. GitHub has no legal obligation to do anything for OP, but the real problem is that they do not have any financial obligation to do anything. There's no alternative, nobody's just going to shift to GitLab; no matter how much GitHub fucks up, they have nothing to lose. Another problem is the absurdity of the rules (although I obviously do not have full knowledge of what OP did and they could be leaving out important elements of the story) on sites like this. GitHub is a site for programming; why is it their place to moderate things from a social perspective? But that's a whole different story. What I'm trying to say here is, the real problem is that there exist single companies that are allowed to destroy your life for any reason they want, without any retaliation or retribution. Your life could depend on single companies, with no alternatives. To me, it seems almost like a dystopian scenario.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Zak 4y agoGitHub's effective monopoly is the core problem, not its moderation policy. Getting banned from GitGud.io, an open-access GitLab instance won't meaningfully affect a person's ability to work in software development, but a ban from GitHub significantly limits one's options. The same goes for centralized social media. Moderation on Twitter and Youtube has been politically important recently not because there aren't other options for microblogging or video hosting with adequate functionality, but because they have the vast majority of the audience for that kind of content. I'm hoping people are starting to realize these monopolies are harmful and moving to more diversified options. > why is it their place to moderate things from a social perspective? The purpose of moderation is to prevent people from abandoning the platform because it's full of behavior or content they deem unacceptable. Most services don't want to take positions on social issues, but if discussions in open source projects on GitHub are full of slurs, threats, suggestions that people should kill themselves, and the like, people will stop using it.
- beej71 4y agoIt's risky running a company that doesn't have user access control over it's own repos. Given the low cost of running your own remote, it seems like a no-brainer.