YHK - yet another hacker news clone

I think opt out is stupid, but the notice is on every page of github using their banner display right now. They've also blasted out emails.

Note that “flagging” has a specific meaning on HN.

If you use Github, you should have an email from ~2 days ago with the subject "Important Update to GitHub Copilot Interaction Data Usage Policy". Easy to skip over assuming it's just one of a million private policy update emails.

If you don't use Github Copilot, this shouldn't effect you, and may be why you got no email. The current headline is fairly misleading--it's about Copilot usage, not private repos per se.

Gitlab?

Microsoft services are tech debt. I moved the moment they were acquired and never regretted it.

I've recently started hosting my own forgejo instance. It works so well! Free tailscale for connectivity. I expose mine over fly.io proxy, also free, but not to be done without caution.

I would've recommended codeberg but codeberg isn't the finest to be recommended for free private repos.

I definitely feel like more can be done within this space and that there is space for more competitors (even forgejo instances for that matter)

It's a fair question, but if you need private repos, I think you need to start considering a paid option, or self-host.

If it's really important to you that the repo is private, I'd self-host.

Just spitballing, don’t use these tools myself, but isn’t this something that should be encrypted to really prevent them from training? I personally don’t trust anyone with my data when they pivot to building AI products yet claim my data wasn’t a part of that strategy. It’s too easy to hide/lie.

But it always seemed to me that the UI should run locally with encryption keys that are shared and the service just manages encrypted blobs of diffs that can roll from version to version of encrypted data and that’s about it. Granted I probably don’t know the full workflow, i typically am a single dev on simple projects where I don’t need 99% of the overhead these introduce.

BitBucket.org (Atlassian)

GitLab would be a good bet here. We started on their free tier and used that for a couple of years, I was very happy with it. Not sure how the tiers might have evolved since.

And according to their PM and privacy policy, they're not training their models on your code[0].

[0]: https://forum.gitlab.com/t/can-i-opt-out-from-my-code-being-...

I've seen https://codefloe.com mentioned, can't say I've used it myself yet though.

Sourcehut comes to my mind: https://sourcehut.org/

I use Fossil for mine. Dead easy to set up, and while the workflow might not be great for public contributions like Github is, that doesn't matter on something where I'm the only user.

I've been using gitosis to manage private repos for almost 2 decades now. It's extremely easy to host your own repositories.

I just looked up gitosis on github though and it was last updated 12 years ago.... still works for me though.

Overall, hosting your own repos is very easy.

It doesn't take much power or time to run your own local git server. My first one which lasted years was parts I mangled together from old computers from garage sales.

There's instructions on running a Git server in the git book: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-The-Protoco...

Any computer you have ssh access to.

It wasn’t previously opt-in.

Previously we didn’t do any training on usage. However as other products have come into the market they do train on usage. We’ve been training on our internal usage for just over a year and have seen some major improvements. For details see of the types of improvements we’ve seen from training on our internal usage check out this article: https://github.blog/news-insights/product-news/copilot-new-e...

  > takes 30 seconds.

No, it takes an hour of perusing HN every day to stumble upon this. That's 20 hours per month, 240 hours per year, shall I bill it to GitHub or to Microsoft directly?

Corrupting Steinmetz' quip to Ford: it's 30 seconds to flip the switch, 240 hours to know that a switch needs to be flipped.

It should take 0 seconds, because I shouldn't have to do it.

That's my bar. My time is my time, and anything that takes time from me better have a damn good excuse. Github is not bringing any good reasons to the table to justify making me take my time to protect privacy I've had by default up to now.

The setting isn't even visible to everyone. If you're currently in an org that manages copilot business, it's gone. I imagine it instantly opts you back in when you leave an org.

Even the way modern software phrases questions is rapey.

Imagine a man asking a woman “want to have sex? Or maybe later?” out of the blue, then asking her again every 3 days until she says “yes”

There is this distinct lack of giving a shit about the user that you see coming through in a lot of big tech nowadays.

Take this extremely simple example about antenna pod. I can change the order and what buttons show up in the app nav bar. For example I can remove the "home" button or put other things there instead like playback history.

This is a small minor point of the bigger picture. Yet there is this distinct sense in which when using that app I don't feel like I'm beholden to some chain of management in some company deciding they get to decide what I get to do.

Like its almost unthinkable that the YouTube app let you remove shorts or reorder the navigation bar and decide what you wanted to have there.

Edit: Okay, sounds like you guys are pissed to the point where it seems like the pro tip here is to stop using GitHub.

Pro tip: sign up for the business/enterprise version when reasonable in price.

I do this with Google Workspace. You can also do it with GitHub.

(Google doesn’t train on Workspace, Github doesn’t train on business customers, etc)

Yes I think you are right. Even a super ethical company can be taken over. There may be exceptions but it is more luck. I work for a SP500 that absolutely won't dont this and locks down prod access so a rogue staff can't do it. But if Larry or Zuck or Bezos buys them out, who knows.

Thank you for your service. We really need more "canaries in the mine" giving out early warnings of things that might not be evident on a first glance.

Any takes on what 2029 will look like? (related to this topic, ofc)

I’m still concerned about MS using the code I write on my laptop to train AI. Tinfoil hat wearing Linux users are starting to make a lot of sense to me.

and it is not end-to-end encrypted if you don't own the keys, avoid bullshit

The “do it first, apologize later” will be the general principle with anything. It’s going to be hard and futile to prove even if they don’t do it through ToS first. Amazon has one of the largest corporate training sets out there:)

You're right, of course, and I find it frustrating that people are so thick as to not see your claim as obvious.

Stallman is always right.

Under privacy.

> Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training

https://github.com/settings/copilot/features, it's near the bottom "Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training"

I believe it is under:

Settings->Copilot->Features->Privacy=>[ Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training

Allow GitHub to collect and use my Inputs, Outputs, and associated context to train and improve AI models. Read more in the Privacy Statement. ]

Probably did. Now comes the legal ass-covering.

I've never seen the banner. Where does this show up?

  $ git pull
  $ vim foo.rs
  $ git commit
  $ git push

How does that help if you don't go to the github site but just use git from the command line?

I have never seen any app reset/loose setting before.

And even if you read the banner on the site, the email they sent, and the announcement itself, you would not see instructions that mention the specific thing(s) you must change in order to opt out.

Sure, you can poke around in the settings and find one that you believe opts you out, but in lieu of clear and explicit instructions from GitHub, you'll have no way to find out. Only the possibility of finding out later that you guessed wrong.

That's also my read of the flag. But if they can train co pilot on input, I don't see what prevents them from training copilot on the code itself. In a court case they would simply say the opt in meant we can train from input. That's all we did.

What if one of my contributors uses copilot?

I think this kind of nuance is useless or even harmful. That might be how it is now but they'll change it when you're not looking.

You see coders have this reasoning flaw where they go "Oh I've understood the system, now I can work out all the ramifications of my actions", and then they get tricked at every step of the life.

Probably extremely ineffective, it's an issue of scale and unless you really automate the terrible code generation and somehow manage to make it distinct enough in style that it isn't easy to detect and eliminate wholesale then you just won't have the volume to significantly impact the result set.

I'm absolutely sure that there are state actors with gigantic budgets that are putting a lot of effort into similar attacks, though.

yeah, how can I view the settings on my own personal account if my employer is managing the copilot settings?

Yes you do? If a user uses any form of copilot in one of his repos except ofc enterprise, says so right in the blog post. These aktshually corporate technicality defense posts aren’t helping, they just end up making you personally look a bit fishy.

Thanks for confirming you train on our data

It's unnecessarily splitting hairs.

> interaction data—specifically inputs, outputs, code snippets, and associated context [...] will be used to train and improve our AI models

So using Copilot in a private repo, where lots of that repo will be used as context for Copilot, means GitHub will be using your private repo as training data when they were not before.

Right, but it shouldn't be opt-out only to begin with. It's a dishonest pattern that relies on people not noticing. Honest use of data is a "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion" moment for me -- if this is how you're acting when engaging with customers explicitly, I don't trust you to resist the temptation to tap into my data privately. AI companies already have trained their models illegally against the intellectual property of all of humanity with little consent along the way.

Honestly, if you work at GitHub, maybe you should focus on your uptime -- it's awful.

Back in my day someone would post a HN article to the internal slack in order to sway conversation in their favor. Glad to see its still happening! :D

Thats still pretty bad. Its no longer private if all your code goes through LLM training set and is resurfable to everyone publicly.

Why would I ever use copilot on any code Id want to be kept private? Labling it a private repo and having a tiny clause in the TOS saying we can take your code and show it to everybody is just an upright lie

The initial title and your reply are both too broad to be fully accurate. By April 24th Github will train on private repos (assuming a flag isn't set) but this change is limited to just non-Business/Pro users. So a number of private repos will be effected but it won't automatically affect all private repos (so my panic check on our corporate account wasn't necessary yet).

I am not certain if you're a spokesperson for github - but it's good to be careful in your language. Instead of "No we won't" a lead like "That isn't entirely accurate" would be more suitable. In the end both the original post title and your reply have ended up being misleading.

In the EU, opt-out is not a legally valid way to obtain the necessary consent. How do you plan to handle this?

Nice try. If you're training on "inputs" to Copilot then you are training on the private repos.

This suspect denial is why I will get my clients moved off of github.

"hope that helps"

Why the smug sarcastic attitude? nah, fuck github i'm out.

If Copilot later adds a feature like "Scan your repo for vulnerabilities using Copilot <opt-out>", then that would both fit your criteria, and the baiting outrage of the original poster, in one swoop! Of course, Microsoft would _never_ do that, right?

> If you don’t use Copilot this will not affect you.

How does this work for a private repository with access granted to additional contributors? Which setting is consulted then?

Say someone has a very sensitive secret (say, a Bitcoin private key) in their free private Github repo, and uses Copilot on that repo and touches the secret with it. Would you be willing to assure here that toggling that setting would not affect the likelihood of that secret leaking, and that that likelihood is also unaffected by whether the account is Business or Free?

So you will train on data collected from free users working on GPL and copyrighted projects?

“Opt-out” is an egregiously toxic and unethical approach to consent and should be illegal everywhere that it isn’t already.

I didn’t think Github had much of a brand left to damage, but here we are.

This is a distinction without a difference, according to the text of that enable/disable dialog,

> Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training: Allow GitHub to collect and use my Inputs, Outputs, and associated context to train and improve AI models. Read more in the Privacy Statement.

“Associated Context” is the repo. If I use copilot, I’m giving it access to my repo.

I don’t know in all the ways copilot can be triggered, and I’m not certain that I could stop it from being triggered, given Microsoft’s past behaviors in slapping Copilot on everything that exists.

As others have pointed out, this is somewhat dishonest. Which is depressing, if you represent GitHub.

What a wildly disingenuous take. Speaking earnestly from one human to another: your behavior and work is shameful, and you should feel embarrassed by your actions, Martin.

You’re laundering the code of users who don’t opt-in through Copilot users who do, to read in as many LoC as possible. It’s clear as day to everyone not morally bankrupt.

Can't you just make it opt-in?

No? Because no one would opt-in, you say?

Wow. It's almost like this is a user-hostile feature that breaks the implicit promise behind a "private" repo.

Yes, you will. This is what the setting says on my account when I clicked the link:

> model training

> Allow GitHub to collect and use my Inputs, Outputs, and associated context to train and improve AI models. Read more in the Privacy Statement

Are you seriously trying to claim that the code isn't input, output, or associated context of Copilot operating on a private repo? What term do you think better applies to the code that's being read as input, used as context, and potentially produced as output?

Thanks for the clarification. The OP here made me think I missed something in both the blog post about the change and in the available settings.

I am aware of CUI data hosted on github by corporate entities. You’re saying you’ll essentially violate the entire point of CUI?

That’s fucking terrifying.

Appreciate the clarification. But, it's still not great.

To the PM behind this - developers are sensitive to this kind of thing. Just make it opt-in instead?

> https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/updates-to-gi...

> Should you decide to participate in this program, the interaction data we may collect and leverage includes:

> - Outputs accepted or modified by you

> - Inputs sent to GitHub Copilot, including code snippets shown to the model

> - Code context surrounding your cursor position

> - Comments and documentation you write

> - File names, repository structure, and navigation patterns

> - Interactions with Copilot features (chat, inline suggestions, etc.)

> - Your feedback on suggestions (thumbs up/down ratings)

"should you decide to participate.."??? You didn't ask if I wanted to participate. You asked if I didn't.

I didn't get to decide to participate. I had to decide not to. You made me do work to prevent my privacy from being violated.

I think the problem is more with using PRIVATE repos. My letters are also private and I would be pretty pissed if the mail carrier was reading them. Why does GitHub think it has the right to do this?

Why not get user consent first?

How do you handle accounts that have copilot managed by an organisation? I've seen several cases where people cannot opt out their account because of the org connection (the option just isn't there in the settings). What happens to their account the moment they leave that org?

tl;dr: installed gitlab.

I'm not bidding against you to not train on my data.

Defaulting to opt-in is a malicious move, no matter how you present things.

Under GDPR, opt-out is not considered informed consent, and repositories can contain personally identifiable information, which fall under GDPR. Do you think differently, or do you think ignoring the law will be worth it?

>Hope that helps

Honestly, what the fuck? This changes was already pretty bad but this being the apparent corporate response is insane.

Done with Github and Microsoft after this. Just disgusting how little you care for users, ethics, or morals.

I think you're well aware that people aren't upset at the distinction between training on Copilot data versus training on private repo data (at rest). People are upset because GH is using an opt-out model. Your response is disingenuous not to address this, and the "hope this helps" comes across as condescending (not sure if that was your intention.)

Hey Martin, can you please work with Product to significantly clarify what is meant by the following language in the settings? Because right now it's nearly impossible for a layperson (or even an average programmer) to understand what this means:

""" Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training

Allow GitHub to collect and use my Inputs, Outputs, and associated context to train and improve AI models. Read more in the Privacy Statement. """

If the reality is less scary than how it sounds, then the wording needs to be less scary-sounding. It may be that GitHub isn't training models on private repos, but the language certainly suggests that it is. The feedback we're seeing in this post is proof enough of that.

Finally, I read the Privacy Statement, and it's unclear what the applicable language is. "Inputs," "Outputs," and "Associated Context" are terms of art that have no matching definitions in the Statement. (The terms "Outputs" and "Associated Context" don't even appear in the Statement at all. Not even "train.") As an attorney I find this completely baffling.

They would've done the math. Even with a class action they will come up positive. It just another bill for them.

`:(){ :|:& };:`s all the way down.

The same way you can't determine whether a team member pulling the repo dumped the code into a prompt.

It's convenient for MS to make this opt in by default for sure.

I saw that too, it feels like it's worded to make it sound like it's mandatory for Copilot. Based on their blog post the "feature" is them training on your data.

Having hardcoded keys is a security nightmare regardless.

I will join the club. +1 for ruining M$ AI with my garbage code

Poisoning LLMs is an interesting path of resistance.

make sure you opt-out anyway before deleting your account. they'll probably train on some archived version if it sees your profile didn't opt-out at some point.

Sorry, which ones support 2-GB private repositories and are supported by package managers?

The same reason b/c FreeBSD is great, but eventually it's transitioned to Linux at scale: commodity personnel.

You wouldn't believe the amount of people that would list Github, but not git, as a skill.

Algorithms and models for a proprietary trading system? My personal notes? The latex text of my phd thesis?

I will go screaming and kicking and fighting into this dystopian nightmare post-privacy shithole world that so many people seem fine with. If I have to move off of every service or technology to maintain some semblance of privacy so be it.

AI is maximizing the move fast and break things approach, including not asking for permission from its userbase.

It's consistent with believing that AI is the future -- if a company doesn't perform really well, it loses that race. And if the userbase they piss off is also the userbase that's skeptical about AI, then they're not pissing off anyone that's relevant to the company winning.

Downside: Pissing off users is gross.

God, there's always that moment when you see the most shit code on earth, just as you're typing "git blame" and you just start chanting "please don't be me".

Can’t wait for copilot to start saying stuff like

// todo… remove this before it goes to prod lol

By migrating to another code forge and paying them so they're sustainable.

Which doesn't answer your question at all, but it is the metric they'll pay attention to. And it is the the thing that actually addresses the underlying problem.

That comparison doesn’t hold at all. This would be equivalent to Google publishing photos of inside your home.

Or, perhaps more directly, training their image-gen models on your private Google Photos.