Alt text: an ad for Github Copilot when viewing files in a github repo

Omg text you can block with an adblocker so scary!!! ENsHITtIfIcATiOn WoOoOOO

admiralteal
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Enshitification doesn’t really apply to GitHub because you aren’t really locked into GitHub. At least you aren’t so long as you consider the git part of it to be more important than the social media platform part of it. Repositories are totally interoperable with other services so the cost to jump platform is fairly low. At least so long as you aren’t relying on curling stuff directly from GitHub, which everyone knows is a terrible idea and very bad practice yet happens all the time anyway.

The template and framework of this idea requires social media platforms be finger traps, with way higher costs to leave than enter.

Doctrow himself is pretty clear about this. Interoperability is the way you fight back against enshitification.

@utopiah@lemmy.ml
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Doctrow himself is pretty clear about this. Interoperability is the way you fight back against enshitification.

funny that’s not what I just read in his FT piece “There are four constraints that prevent enshittification: competition, regulation, self-help and labour. To reverse enshittification and guard against its re-emergence, we must restore and strengthen each of these.” published just yesterday.

Also FWIW we absolutely are locked into GitHub… because others are too. That’s why M$ bought it in the first place, classic strategy from Redmond. I go use Gitlab, have my own Gitea instance, but in practice where do people talk on issues? Github. That’s why even entities like Mozilla or KDE that have entire CI and bug system outside of Github still often have mirrors there. Because that’s sadly where most of us end up being locked.

poVoq
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Github is pretty much a social network for coders these days. If it was so easy to switch away or just not use their service, why is it that the vast majority of projects are hosted there? Git alone can’t be the reason, as you rightly say it isn’t any different from other git hosts. The relevant parts are the collaboration features and those are exactly the type of social media that enshittification applies to.

i deleted my github a while ago. now i use codeberg for my public repos and just use a local git repo for dotfiles

voxel
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  1. it’s not intrusive
  2. it can be dismissed in one click, and this hides these ads everywhere and permanently

Horse armor

phillaholic
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Someone needs to turn the hyperbole dial down on Lemmy. My feed is frequently nothing but Chicken Little’s whining about trivial shit. When something truly egregious comes up, I’m not going to be able to see if in a sea of outrage.

Privacy, FOSS, leftists – all of these communities have a very large presence here, and while I love all of them, they do tend to love their purity tests. Purity tests have been a constant in these communities for as long as I can remember them existing. Lemmy just has a high concentration of 'em.

Please drink verification can to push

Yeah… And microtransactions in videogames used to be “just cosmetic”. /s

Nah, no /s needed when there are actual ample examples of enshittification via nickel and diming ads and ad-like bwhavior.

Not sure what you think “/s” means, but what it means is that the comment was sarcastic, which it was.

But in this case, the meaning stays the same even without the /s, because the key message is factually true and the sentence still functions as a contra to the previous comment.

/s never changes the meaning. Its just a disclosure.

It doesn’t change the intended meaning but it can change the interpreted one.

For example when I write “I love to give my data to Google /s” you can be sure that I actually do not love to give my data to Google, whereas leaving out the ‘/s’ I could have meant it sincerely (for example, because I want targeted ads, perfectly tailored to my needs).

This example clearly illustrates the totally opposite interpreted meaning.

But in the case of the comment we are discussing, disclosing the sarcasm makes no difference to either side of the conversation (the sender and the readers)

I thnkI wrote /s, because “just cosmetic” is already a lie.

LiveLM
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Ublock > Pick Element > Click that > Create.

I get that it shouldn’t be there but imo GitHub has made a lot more annoying changes to their UI than this piece of text

voxel
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you don’t need ublock to remove it, just hover over it and press a cross button. it permanently dismisses ALL copilot ads.

“Permanently”

voxel
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yes, permanently. I hit that little x a year ago and haven’t seen this little ad thing ever since

It’s only permanent until they decide that it isn’t.

Thanks.

@Auzy@beehaw.org
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Honestly, I feel like you guys are just nit picking now lol

That’s the least intrusive ad I’ve ever seen

You go accepting one small thing after another, and soon you will be locked into a crappy service.

@Auzy@beehaw.org
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Sure mate.

It’s like covid where we got told we’re all going to die from the vaccine and there will be super cancers or whatever.

Years later, and it hasn’t happened.

Firefox made Google their starting page decades ago. They profit from it, have things gotten worse? No… Better stop using Firefox and move to edge. But, based on your comment, they should have by now

This is literally a tiny non intrusive text just mentioning a service they offer. Everyone would be confused unless it didn’t have that red square

Are vendors no longer even allowed to link to their own services now? Because in another thread, Microsoft literally got accused of this because they offered things like issue tracking in GitHub. It’s apparently fine for other vendors to do this though.

May I recommend you complain about this on the front page of the github repos you own if you actually believe it’s a big deal?

It might have even been there for months lol

It’s like covid where we got told we’re all going to die from the vaccine and there will be super cancers or whatever.

It has no place in a source code repository… It starts small and gets worse. Always.

So far you guys have complained about something I can’t replicate, and nobody actually tested except for me.

And then a feature which has no real impact on real developers, just people stealing code

Now you’re complaining about this. Seriously, it’s just nitpicking.

I didn’t hear anyone complain when Firefox added pocket support and VPN options into their config.

Again, really not a big deal at all… There’s a reason no real developers are complaining about this stuff…

Also why doesn’t it have any place here? It’s a service GitHub offers related directly to development. And it needed a big red square around it so anyone even knew what op was referring to.

Next thing we know you guys will be complaining that the submenu contains links to their other services like issues and such (someone actually complained about GitHub offering too many features last thread… And they got upvoted for it simply because they claimed Microsoft was using features to extinguish other services or whatever).

The first guy complaining in the first thread didn’t even have much source code commits on GitHub (and it seemed like it was a free account). But was making a huge deal about everything

If you’re genuinely upset, write about it on the front page of your repos. But, I suspect the people complaining barely use GitHub anyway honestly

DuckGuy
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I didn’t hear anyone complain when Firefox added pocket support

People did. I did. Firefox’s Pocket integration is always the first thing I disable on a fresh install. You’ll always find people complaining about the tiniest things :-)

You’re possibly right… I don’t use pocket… But it doesn’t get in the way for me… But, firefox also has ads for their own VPN now too. But, I guess my point is, it really isn’t that intrusive.

It definitely isn’t intrusive in the way that Windows 11 hijacks your chrome tabs into Edge, and takes over on reboot (I hate apple, but I literally went out and bought a mac a week after tolerating that)

Dumb take.

@Auzy@beehaw.org
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Most developers don’t overreact about a service advertising it’s own services on a service, using non intrusive text which nobody would have noticed without a red square around it.

The hilarious thing is I could go to any open source project and put a dozen red squares.

The fact that no actual projects on GitHub are getting angry about this should suggest it’s an overreaction

People including myself tried this strategy for Linux before… It’s still not year of the Linux desktop

It always starts small. The next step is, every time you commit code you get that then every time you commit code you have to disagree not using copilot.

It has to be stopped when it is small.

Incase people missed it.

@ONRYO@feddit.ch
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deleted by creator

come to codeberg my friend https://codeberg.org

Do they require a phone number? I tried to sign up to gitlab (just to post bug reports!) but they required a phone number (which is linked to government ID).

no, email is enough

Codeberg only allows open source licensed code. If you’re working on non-free software you could self host Codeberg’s underlying software, or SourceHut is a different but other good option too.

In what circumstances would you develop non-free code and still have the need to pick a provider? Don’t companies have regulations usually, so your have to use either their own hosted instance or GitHub enterprise?

I use GitHub private repos for my home configuration stuff. So it’s not open source since I’m the only one using it and I don’t want someone else to know how to attack my network.

For certain configurations, self hosting doesn’t make sense. For people like me, who would rather spend his time doing the stuff I care about instead of maintaining the stuff I don’t care about, I’m okay giving Microsoft some “control” over my code for the convenience.

That said, I am thinking about moving my FOSS code off of GitHub since that is an option. I’d have to see their CI/CD pipelines though.

Just FYI, you can keep personal repositories for configurations and whatnot on Codeberg, check out the FAQ: https://docs.codeberg.org/getting-started/faq/#can-i-host-personal%2C-private-repositories-that-i-do-not-intend-to-publish%3F

I’d have to see their CI/CD pipelines though.

Codeberg hasn’t deployed their Actions yet, but the software Gitea and Forgejo both have it, so I believe it will come some time in the near future (don’t know how near though, could probably ask them over on @Codeberg).

EDIT: not completely true, actions have been ready for a while apparently, but you currently have to provide your own compute: https://docs.codeberg.org/ci/actions/
Which isn’t ideal, though

In the meantime you can either use Woodpecker or use another forge like Gitea hosted (has Actions already) or Gitlab with their CI/CD

@lud@lemm.ee
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Doesn’t appear that you are allowed to host personal code projects though.

Of course not, that’s the point. I don’t know what their stance on little toy projects kept for yourself is if that’s what you’re asking

i work for some people who don’t host their own gitlab/gitea/whatever and use the paid tier from github or gitlab. they could not use codeberg.

That’s what I said, they use paid GitHub, so you as the worker don’t get the choice, you need to use whatever they do

Meanwhile, if you start your own project, you need to choose a platform, but you also need to choose a license, so nothing is stopping you from using a free licence and picking Codeberg

I struggle to see many cases where someone that cares about FOSS gets to choose between GitHub, Codeberg etc, but doesn’t get to choose the license of their project. As an employee you get neither, for your own projects you get both.

Github is not a two sided market, enshittification does not apply. They make all their money from users.

poVoq
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No they don’t. Github was aquired by Microsoft to act as a funnel into their Azure Cloud and similar projects and thus subject to that “market”.

All owned by microsoft right?

poVoq
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Yes, hence the quotation marks in “market”. But Microsoft is a company large enough to have an internal “market” for different departments and there is also the outward pressure from Mirosoft’s shareholders for whom the cloud business in the main driver of profits/stock value.

Edit: Maybe to make it more clear: Yes there are no advertisers as in the classical “enshittification” model, but Github is subject to similar outside pressures that do not prioritize the needs of the Github users and thus a very similar dynamic enfolds.

That text has been there for like a year?

Only noticed it today. I guess years of adblocking made me ultra sensitive to ads that this one stuck out like a sore thumb.

It is quite antithetical to the principles of FOSS to rely on a platform that pushes ads. It’s unfortunate that we settled on github but it is what it is.

oo1
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it is what it is.

Isn’t the whole point of git that the repo is cloned in a million places. You can switch the remote repo really easily?

Maybe i’m wrong; I stopped using github years ago. And I don’t do a lot of collaborative stuff, so I’m happy with just local git + rsync, local backups for most things. Maybe it has loads of unique features I’ve never noticed.

I’m sure there are ways to scrape other data off the platform too. For example:
https://docs.codeberg.org/advanced/migrating-repos/

I’m not saying the alternatives are necessarily better for every project. Maybe github really is best for some - but it is a choice of the project to use github. They can move if they prefer the set of features of another repository.

I’m not convinced by anyone using “critical mass” justification for choosing github, that sounds like stockholm syndrome even though you have a key to the door.
“Too lazy to switch” that’s legitimate; if a wee bit dissapointing.
“Doesn’t allow my special sauce proprietary licence” - well . . .

Github did a lot of work into making it incompatible with just git. Moving issues, wiki, projects etc. etc. Makes it not just a simple switch to another hoster.

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