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Good. That's a gain, not a loss. We're better off without social media psyop manipulations and subscription services bolted onto our code repositories. We're be

Good. That's a gain, not a loss. We're better off without social media psyop manipulations and subscription services bolted onto our code repositories. We're better off without a giant evilcorp getting wholesale access to a large majority of the world's source code.

dkdbejwi383 2mo ago
I just use GitHub for the basics: repo hosting, reviews and actions - what are the "social media psyop manipulations"? I've never really paid much attention to the other features.
- chicken1991 2mo ago
  But now the users who only use core functions (re: repo hosting, reviews and actions) suffer when the service is down due to overreach with feature implementation.
- MisterTea 2mo ago
  All the metrics based around how many commits you have made, how many stars your repo has, etc. Why is that info gamified? Its a dopamine addiction channel.
  - mirekrusin 2mo ago
    Seriously?
  - tokioyoyo 2mo ago
    It’s for subset of people who cares about that. You can just blanket-ignore everyone who cares about that, and move on.
    - shimman 2mo ago
      Yeah but then VC use these metrics to fund projects and suddenly what was previously a joke now becomes a way to make wealth.
- artyom 2mo ago
  It's good you can isolate yourself from it. But there's plenty of cases. Open source maintainers being harassed or being demanded work through Github's issues. Or being feed AI slop to review endlessly. Or recruiters filtering resumes via Github activity graphs or repository stars. And obviously the side shady market of all of the above (e.g. buying/selling popularity). Like the parent comment, I can't wait for social media to be completely obliterated from code repositories.
  - fn-mote 2mo ago
    > Open source maintainers being harassed or being demanded work through Github's issues This isn't "psyops". Sure, it's a bad side of social interactions, but when you interact with other people, there's always some of this - in person as well as online. The lead-off argument here seems more like "interacting with society can be bad". I have no argument that selling popularity is bad and filtering by stars is stupid, but I don't blame Github for any of that. You could equally well assign the success of certain coders to YouTube because they came to attention by showing off their work in livestreams. Which I do not. They found a way to advertise their own success, but it's theirs.
    - artyom 2mo ago
      > The lead-off argument here seems more like "interacting with society can be bad". The argument is that there's no need for that much social interaction to produce quality code, quite the contrary, the more social interaction, the more focus is lost. I know it's an unpopular opinion, but there's a reason why the Linux Kernel communication is still done through acerbic email threads.
  - creato 2mo ago
    None of this is specific to GitHub. The exact same problems will sometimes happen any time users and developers communicate, which is a basic requirement of developing useful software. I doubt GitHub issues are worse than mailing lists or any other mechanism.
    - 2mo ago
- ascii0eks84 2mo ago
  You outlined what it (and all git hosting other services) are for: repository hosting, optionally issue tracker, mandatorily pull requests (for syncing with master or other branches), Actions for automated steps on merge to a tracked branch.
andrewmutz 2mo ago
If there are no subscription services, what will fund the free open source repositories?
zerox7felf 2mo ago
Could be argued to be both a gain and a loss...
- bookofjoe 2mo ago
  "Replicants are either a benefit or a hazard."
fallingbananna 2mo ago
Personally I never engaged in the community aspect of GitHub. In my eyes it would be a ginormous gain to our colective mental health to not have the expectation to contribute to open source projects for free, or to have "green squares" every day on a public GitHub profile.
- Treegarden 2mo ago
  This seems to be such a non issue to me, I always ignored this and its strange to hear others feel compelled.
  - graceful6800 2mo ago
    That's the point of it though. It's designed to be gamified and addictive to coerce users into spending more time Engaging with the site. Great that it doesn't work on you, but it works really well on a depressingly large number of people.
  - dwedge 2mo ago
    Especially now with LLMs. My hand coded github activity is through the roof the last two years just because of a job change, but I assume everyone's activity is up in the last 2 years for other reasons and if it meant anything in the past it definitely doesn't now
mbonnet 2mo ago
Who the hell uses GitHub socially?

dkdbejwi383 2mo ago

I just use GitHub for the basics: repo hosting, reviews and actions - what are the "social media psyop manipulations"? I've never really paid much attention to the other features.

chicken1991 2mo ago
But now the users who only use core functions (re: repo hosting, reviews and actions) suffer when the service is down due to overreach with feature implementation.
MisterTea 2mo ago
All the metrics based around how many commits you have made, how many stars your repo has, etc. Why is that info gamified? Its a dopamine addiction channel.
- mirekrusin 2mo ago
  Seriously?
- tokioyoyo 2mo ago
  It’s for subset of people who cares about that. You can just blanket-ignore everyone who cares about that, and move on.
  - shimman 2mo ago
    Yeah but then VC use these metrics to fund projects and suddenly what was previously a joke now becomes a way to make wealth.
artyom 2mo ago
It's good you can isolate yourself from it. But there's plenty of cases. Open source maintainers being harassed or being demanded work through Github's issues. Or being feed AI slop to review endlessly. Or recruiters filtering resumes via Github activity graphs or repository stars. And obviously the side shady market of all of the above (e.g. buying/selling popularity). Like the parent comment, I can't wait for social media to be completely obliterated from code repositories.
- fn-mote 2mo ago
  > Open source maintainers being harassed or being demanded work through Github's issues This isn't "psyops". Sure, it's a bad side of social interactions, but when you interact with other people, there's always some of this - in person as well as online. The lead-off argument here seems more like "interacting with society can be bad". I have no argument that selling popularity is bad and filtering by stars is stupid, but I don't blame Github for any of that. You could equally well assign the success of certain coders to YouTube because they came to attention by showing off their work in livestreams. Which I do not. They found a way to advertise their own success, but it's theirs.
  - artyom 2mo ago
    > The lead-off argument here seems more like "interacting with society can be bad". The argument is that there's no need for that much social interaction to produce quality code, quite the contrary, the more social interaction, the more focus is lost. I know it's an unpopular opinion, but there's a reason why the Linux Kernel communication is still done through acerbic email threads.
- creato 2mo ago
  None of this is specific to GitHub. The exact same problems will sometimes happen any time users and developers communicate, which is a basic requirement of developing useful software. I doubt GitHub issues are worse than mailing lists or any other mechanism.
  - 2mo ago
ascii0eks84 2mo ago
You outlined what it (and all git hosting other services) are for: repository hosting, optionally issue tracker, mandatorily pull requests (for syncing with master or other branches), Actions for automated steps on merge to a tracked branch.

andrewmutz 2mo ago

If there are no subscription services, what will fund the free open source repositories?

zerox7felf 2mo ago

Could be argued to be both a gain and a loss...

bookofjoe 2mo ago
"Replicants are either a benefit or a hazard."

fallingbananna 2mo ago

Personally I never engaged in the community aspect of GitHub. In my eyes it would be a ginormous gain to our colective mental health to not have the expectation to contribute to open source projects for free, or to have "green squares" every day on a public GitHub profile.

Treegarden 2mo ago
This seems to be such a non issue to me, I always ignored this and its strange to hear others feel compelled.
- graceful6800 2mo ago
  That's the point of it though. It's designed to be gamified and addictive to coerce users into spending more time Engaging with the site. Great that it doesn't work on you, but it works really well on a depressingly large number of people.
- dwedge 2mo ago
  Especially now with LLMs. My hand coded github activity is through the roof the last two years just because of a job change, but I assume everyone's activity is up in the last 2 years for other reasons and if it meant anything in the past it definitely doesn't now

mbonnet 2mo ago

Who the hell uses GitHub socially?