GitHub Alienates Developers By Force Feeding Them AI Recommendations (theregister.com) 27
A week ago, GitHub fused its home page feed with algorithmic recommendations, infuriating more than a few users of the Microsoft-owned code-hosting giant. The Register reports: On Tuesday, GitHub responded to the hostile feedback by stating that some of the questioned behavior was actually due to bugs that have now been fixed, even as it doubled down on its decision to combine the previously separate "Following" and "For You" feeds. The "Following" feed included "activity by people you follow and from repositories you watch." It was the result of deliberate user choice: developers selected the code and contributors they were interested in. The "For You" feed included "activity and recommendations based on your GitHub network." It was the result of GitHub's social algorithm and user behavior data.
As of last week, GitHub combined the two to lighten the burden on its servers, or so the company claimed. "When we launched the latest version of your feed on September 6, 2023, we made changes to the underlying technology of the feed in order to improve overall platform performance," the biz explained in a post on Tuesday. "As a result, we removed the functionality for 'push events for repositories a user is subscribed to'. We don't take these changes lightly, but as our community continues to grow tremendously, we have to prioritize our availability, user experience, and performance."
Bram Borggreve, founder of Columbia-based dev shop BeeSoft Labs, offered one of the more polite objections to the unrequested feed change among the almost two hundred people who commented, not to mention those participating in adjacent discussion threads who asked for a reversal [...]. An engineer at an IT infrastructure management software developer, who wished to remain anonymous as he is not authorized to speak to the media, told The Register in an email, "GitHub tried this before, and their users said no. They are taking away a useful feature and replacing it with social media algorithm garbage. It's like they forgot that people use their platform to do actual work, and not just doom scroll issues, pull requests, and new JavaScript frameworks." "We understand that many of you are upset with the recent changes to your feed," the company stated. "We should have done a better job communicating recent changes and how those decisions relate to our broader platform goals. Your continued feedback is invaluable as we evolve and continue to strive to provide a first-class developer experience that helps every developer be happier and more productive."
As of last week, GitHub combined the two to lighten the burden on its servers, or so the company claimed. "When we launched the latest version of your feed on September 6, 2023, we made changes to the underlying technology of the feed in order to improve overall platform performance," the biz explained in a post on Tuesday. "As a result, we removed the functionality for 'push events for repositories a user is subscribed to'. We don't take these changes lightly, but as our community continues to grow tremendously, we have to prioritize our availability, user experience, and performance."
Bram Borggreve, founder of Columbia-based dev shop BeeSoft Labs, offered one of the more polite objections to the unrequested feed change among the almost two hundred people who commented, not to mention those participating in adjacent discussion threads who asked for a reversal [...]. An engineer at an IT infrastructure management software developer, who wished to remain anonymous as he is not authorized to speak to the media, told The Register in an email, "GitHub tried this before, and their users said no. They are taking away a useful feature and replacing it with social media algorithm garbage. It's like they forgot that people use their platform to do actual work, and not just doom scroll issues, pull requests, and new JavaScript frameworks." "We understand that many of you are upset with the recent changes to your feed," the company stated. "We should have done a better job communicating recent changes and how those decisions relate to our broader platform goals. Your continued feedback is invaluable as we evolve and continue to strive to provide a first-class developer experience that helps every developer be happier and more productive."
"communication" (Score:5, Insightful)
"We should have done a better job communicating recent changes and how those decisions relate to our broader platform goals. Your continued feedback is invaluable as we evolve and continue to strive to provide a first-class developer experience that helps every developer be happier and more productive."
"communication" is PHB speak for one way, transmit only declaration of a decision made unilaterally.
They're incapable of actual "communication" which is two way.
Keep an eye out for this redefinition of "communication".
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They're incapable of actual "communication" which is two way.
They are not incapable but rather unwilling to perform bidirectional communication. Corporations may want to collect all your data, but they certainly never want to listen to anyone, other than their investors.
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incapable
1. Lacking the necessary ability, capacity, or power.
2. Unable to perform adequately; incompetent.
I think incapable is the correct term here.
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"We should have done a better job communicating recent changes and how those decisions relate to our broader platform goals.
Translation: We did a lousy job of lying about what we are really up to. We will try to lie more convincingly in the future.
A good world (Score:2)
We did a bad job of shoveling FoMO bullshit on you, who give us software for free and will work harder to convince you, this is good for you too.
In a good world, all subscribers will 're-tweet' their "For you" articles to the CxO's email address.
Just more of the same ... (Score:2)
Decentralization (Score:3)
Wasn't git supposed to be decentralized, as opposed to the previous source-control solutions that all required centralized, er, hubs?
Ah, developers, developers, developers, one wonders when you yourselves will learn...
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Wasn't git supposed to be decentralized[?]
Git is decentralized.
...one wonders when you yourselves will learn...
Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw rocks. Git is a distributed version control system that is independent of Github. Github's value is in all the ancillary communication services it provides, and as a single known location where most FOSS can be found. Git and Github are related to each other in name only, and the former in no way requires the latter.
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Git and Github are related to each other in name only, and the former in no way requires the latter.
I know. My comment was a bit of sarcasm on how everyone, and in particular developers who should know better, always fall in the same old trap of becoming dependant on centralized services when they should instead go for decentralized ones.
Github is a particularly ironic case as they construct strong centralization atop a fully decentralized service/protocol. Everything it provides can be done with packages that are as decentralized as git itself, and resilient to any corporation meddling, especially Micros
Github (Score:2)
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If you self host, isn't the repo only on the machines YOU self hosted on?
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If you self host, isn't the repo only on the machines YOU self hosted on?
It's also on any machine that clones from your repository, which can them become a host itself. Then any machine that clones from the cloner becomes a potential host, and so on down the line.
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Bingifying Github, who would have guessed? (Score:2)
Everything that Microsoft touches goes to hell anyway, like they are trying to outdo Google.
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Everything that Microsoft touches goes to hell anyway, like they are trying to outdo Google.
Well, Google is still banned in the Central Country because they stood by the principles, cannot say this about any other major US corp.
Ye Olde Bugs (Score:2)
On Tuesday, GitHub responded to the hostile feedback by stating that some of the questioned behavior was actually due to bugs
So lets blame it on bugs. The only bugs Microsoft would admit to in the past were months after a CVE was released, even then they blamed anything but themselves.
In anycase I just moved my repositories off of GitHub due to 2FA being forced on us. So I will not see this AI crap anymore.
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Who cares if they demand 2FA? I have a couple of Yubikey tokens and an authenticator app on my cell phone, so I have three available second factors. Yeah, in an ideal world, devs wouldn't need to be prodded to secure their accounts -- but too many devs think "an account compromise won't happen to ME", and getting complacent about that is a good way to ensure it happens.
The AI recommendations are crap, though.
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Come back to me when MFA doesn't require spending so much money. Not all of us have tricked the world into thinking our jobs are valuable.
It was only a matter of time (Score:2)
Microsoft gonna Microsoft (Score:3)
I'm surprised anybody is surprised by this. The old adage, "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product" has long since been expanded to include people who (like GitHub contributors) are giving value in other ways than by paying cold, hard cash. Look what's happening at Reddit, for example.
GitHub will keep going until contributors find a better way. If they ever do, Microsoft will be left holding a bag full of nothing.
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You associate not-paying with the least-protected poors, but paying with cold, hard cash has long since - nay, never protected you. Look at cable television, for example.
A better way typically only lasts until dealt with by any of the tools the "free market" welcomes. Fortunately the ISPs in my region had google itself flexing against them (though they found the "free market" inviable even in ideal trial conditions).
Enshittification (Score:4, Insightful)
Thought devs liked AI (Score:2)
It is like the mess over Unity. Sure it is a problem, but most devs will accept the ass blasting and this shit will continue.
Yall have demonstrated that you have no back bone what so ever and will let marketing rule you.
They should have seen this coming (Score:2)
every time (Score:2)
Anything owned by a company dominated by marketing types and bean counters will always try to wring every last penny out of everything, user be damned, just to justify their own existence.