Rendered at 18:19:23 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
hermitcrab 2 hours ago [-]
Author of the post here. Github finally took the offending page down approximately 10 minutes after the post appeared on the front page of HN. Total coincidence. I'm sure!
Moral of the story. If you want even the most basic level of support from Github, you need to get on the front page of HN first.
And it seems they are able to do things very quickly, when they want to. Bastards.
koolba 1 hours ago [-]
> Moral of the story. If you want even the most basic level of support from Github, you need to get on the front page of HN first.
This also works for Google support.
> And it seems they are able to do things very quickly, when they want to. Bastards.
I wouldn’t chalk any of this up to malicious intent. I’m sure they are swamped with such requests.
It was already a problem before agents could automatically perform these actions.
And it’s not something you can really automate on their end either. At least not the judgement call on the removal. Imagine if there was a fully automated process and it inadvertently took down a legit project.
debugnik 1 hours ago [-]
> I wouldn’t chalk any of this up to malicious intent. I’m sure they are swamped with such requests.
Stalling in the hope that reporters won't escalate, instead of allocating a tiny bit of their billions in profit to hiring for this, is malicious in my book.
amdsn 58 minutes ago [-]
I had several small requests for moderation (deleting and banning spammers posting spam/crypto scam issues/PRs in my repos and ones I contribute to) answered within a day earlier this year after more than a decade of never needing to request moderation. I'm not defending GH here as it's obviously unacceptable that the OP's issue took this long, but they definitely do or at least did have mods. I would guess they need a lot more of them if something this serious went unaddressed, or maybe the ones I interacted with are now gone and have not been backfilled.
majorchord 1 hours ago [-]
Can you provide evidence of these claims?
csomar 1 hours ago [-]
I mean we are in the thread of evidence right now?
veverkap 50 minutes ago [-]
GitHub support is full of amazing, hard working people.
It is also comically understaffed. This is not because they can't find people to work - it's not given the budget necessary.
nikanj 36 minutes ago [-]
They might be amazing and hard working, but that doesn’t free them from the yoke of policy and script
elAhmo 49 minutes ago [-]
It is a problem they could solve if they want to. They have billions of profits per quarter.
They just don't want to. Not malicious, just ignorant and disrespectful of their users.
alightsoul 24 minutes ago [-]
YouTube already does it autonomously with seemingly no legal consequences for them because you agree to it in their tos
rkagerer 40 minutes ago [-]
I’m sure they are swamped with such requests
Then maybe they should be growing their customer support capacity along with their business. It drives me crazy how big companies have normalized cutting those departments down to anemic proportions. Especially those where you're a paying customer.
dogleash 38 minutes ago [-]
>I wouldn’t chalk any of this up to malicious intent. I’m sure they are swamped with such requests.
It's malice from whoever is responsible for under-staffing. It's also malice to prioritize the squeaky wheel for optics; it's intentional to reduce the spread of the knowledge of how unresponsive they are.
elAhmo 50 minutes ago [-]
Describes pretty much any of the big companies. For example, I have seen numerous times people got their account locked on Google, or their app stuck in limbo at Apple, and then after post becomes viral all problems get solved.
latexr 26 minutes ago [-]
Apple in particular is mocked because they explicitly say (used to say?) “going to the press doesn’t help”, but they’ve shown time and again that it’s the most effective way to get them to take action.
monster_truck 22 minutes ago [-]
They're generally extremely quick about this if you ping ~anyone on the security team with the offending url and a link to the real repo. There is a long ongoing game of cat & mouse against malware in repackaged things like first party windows utilities to leverage the signed binaries.
ajmurmann 2 hours ago [-]
It might not be a willingness issue as much as a bandwidth issue.
post-it 2 hours ago [-]
Bandwidth can be bought with money, of which Microsoft made an extra $133.7 billion this year.
ajmurmann 2 hours ago [-]
We know that coding agents have been pushing GH to its limits. Scaling is hard - especially staff. Maybe they aren't trying to scale support but I think it's reasonable to give them the benefit of doubt here, given what we know publicly
cwillu 1 hours ago [-]
Microsoft is not some plucky upstart company with 12 employees and an unexpectedly popular product. We do not, in fact, need to give them the benefit of the doubt here.
dualvariable 25 minutes ago [-]
Having "hackers" on this site giving the benefit of doubt to companies clearing hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue per year will never cease to stop being ironic to me...
veverkap 48 minutes ago [-]
They aren't trying to scale support. If anything, they are trying to throw AI at the problem. The support team is understaffed and overwhelmed.
cj 1 hours ago [-]
You’re saying this is a problem money can’t solve?
There’s no need for benefit of the doubt when it comes to the level of support provided by tech companies.
Bad support by tech companies is a conscious profit-preserving choice.
iAMkenough 1 hours ago [-]
That’s a self-inflicted issue they should have properly planned for.
whateveracct 54 minutes ago [-]
They have to dump all that free cash into data centers, sorry
kstrauser 1 hours ago [-]
Never thought I'd see the day when Microsoft is elite.
NobodyNada 2 hours ago [-]
Sounds like they can afford elite customer support.
2 hours ago [-]
iAMkenough 2 hours ago [-]
Good thing HN provided them some bandwidth to do their jobs.
cyanydeez 2 hours ago [-]
unwilling to provide proper support?
Just seems like a silly rational response to the same problem.
locknitpicker 2 hours ago [-]
Yes,evidently bandwidth from HN unblocks takedown requests of malicious content.
ajmurmann 2 hours ago [-]
Prioritization and escalation exists in most companies. I guarantee you that once an issue hits the HN front page, even engineers who might have totally different talks will get involved. (Never worked at GH or have talked to anyone there in years but this is how everything works pretty much everywhere)
toomuchtodo 2 hours ago [-]
The public shaming will continue until the internal incentives improve. Make sure to drop that HN thread link into the internal task tracker y'all. Don't forget to report to journalists if the severity warrants it (Brian Krebs, 404media, etc).
"Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome."
alightsoul 26 minutes ago [-]
This was not my experience at all. Someone on the bitchat android commented with a virus, reported it and was taken down 2 hours later
Same goes for all companies bigger than a startup. The first line of support is AI, the second line is clueless, and the third level is powerless. HN is the only way to reach a human with both ability and willingness to help
hsuduebc2 1 hours ago [-]
Just send DMCA if you want their attention, they act harshly and quickly. Even when it's false one.
nixgeek 21 minutes ago [-]
I see OP edited their post claiming getting to HN's front helped.
I think the likelihood GitHub did something within 10 minutes of a post appearing on HN's front page is approximately zero.
Nobody in GitHub Trust & Safety is sat there watching HN.
An executive or communications professional who might have heard it got on HN, or seen it appear in a tool monitoring Microsoft and GitHub's mentions across the internet, and who then flagged the post, Trust & Safety would probably spend *more than 10 minutes* noticing the email or Teams message, then trying to find the right ticket internally. Then after locating the ticket you still have to investigate the facts, discuss, and click buttons to ban/delete the user.
It's (much) more likely this sat in a queue until someone got to it and the timing of it being on HN is a complete coincidence.
hermitcrab 14 minutes ago [-]
It's a hell of a coincidence.
OCTAGRAM 58 minutes ago [-]
I recently found "free" version of Lossless Scaling on GitHub. The release installer is definitely malware. It took GitHub 3 days to shutdown malware distribution. Category of my ticket was malware report, not copyright infringe
hermitcrab 12 minutes ago [-]
Author here. I initially reported it as an imitation. A few days later I added evidence that it was malware.
wingerlang 47 minutes ago [-]
If GitHub staff is still reading this thread, maybe you can take down https://screenmemory.github.io/ as well. I reported it 4 weeks ago, ticket ID 4703161
Havoc 1 hours ago [-]
They’re presumably too busy with keeping availability above nine sixes
Not exactly the same, but I've noticed a pretty sizable uptick in the number of spam/scam PR comments being left on GitHub (and a longer delay before they're removed after report).
Not the worst thing in the world, they're easy to spot, but I'd like to see GitHub invest more time in protecting their users from falling victim to these bad actors.
msalihb 47 minutes ago [-]
I found a page that serving e-books I've purchased on github. It is a bit bad feeling
MBCook 47 minutes ago [-]
What do you know. Apple’s “never run to the media it never helps anything” rule works just as well with GitHub.
kg 2 hours ago [-]
In the future just issue a DMCA takedown right away for cases like this, IMO.
2 hours ago [-]
hannob 43 minutes ago [-]
Welcome to the club!
There's an impersonation profile of me on Github (username happyhannob). I've reported it a while ago, received the same automated message, and no reaction otherwise. It's still online.
I guess you can't expect basic fraud prevention from a company currently building the future with AI...
josefritzishere 1 hours ago [-]
[dead]
jay73763 2 hours ago [-]
why would anyone host commercial binary software on github or any other third party domain?
hermitcrab 2 hours ago [-]
Pirates and crackers generally don't host stuff on their own domains. They don't want to pay for the bandwidth and they don't want to be traced.
sgskinner 1 hours ago [-]
I think they’re alluding to OP not hosting their own downloads.
hermitcrab 55 minutes ago [-]
I am the OP. I host my own downloads on my own domain and nowhere else. Only the malicious imitation is hosted on Github.
someonebaggy 2 hours ago [-]
If it's your software send a DMCA. They have a legally required timeframe to process those. If it's open source, however, then you don't have any valid DMCA claim.
hnlmorg 2 hours ago [-]
That’s not how open source works.
Open source code is still copyrighted. What the license defines is rights that people have in distributing that code. If an unofficial repository is using open source code to ship malware, and the license that software had didn’t allow that, then the unofficial repository is still breaking copyright law despite the code being open source.
someonebaggy 56 minutes ago [-]
There's no open source license that prohibits derivative works that are malware.
whateveracct 52 minutes ago [-]
i think it's in the spirit of it, which is enough for a DMCA lol
someonebaggy 14 minutes ago [-]
Um no, you have to send it about an actual copyright violation, not just because you don't like something.
It's not illegal to send an incorrect one by mistake but GitHub probably won't process it. It's illegal to send an incorrect one intentionally. Now that it's been pointed out to you that making malware isn't a copyright violation, it's intentional if you send a DMCA anyway.
NewJazz 1 hours ago [-]
Also open source license doesn't grant use of trademarks, but I'm not sure that means DMCA applies.
93po 2 hours ago [-]
Code can be open source while the name and logos are copyrighted and still enforceable via DMCA
rpdillon 38 minutes ago [-]
You're thinking of trademarks. Different body of law.
Moral of the story. If you want even the most basic level of support from Github, you need to get on the front page of HN first.
And it seems they are able to do things very quickly, when they want to. Bastards.
This also works for Google support.
> And it seems they are able to do things very quickly, when they want to. Bastards.
I wouldn’t chalk any of this up to malicious intent. I’m sure they are swamped with such requests.
It was already a problem before agents could automatically perform these actions.
And it’s not something you can really automate on their end either. At least not the judgement call on the removal. Imagine if there was a fully automated process and it inadvertently took down a legit project.
Stalling in the hope that reporters won't escalate, instead of allocating a tiny bit of their billions in profit to hiring for this, is malicious in my book.
It is also comically understaffed. This is not because they can't find people to work - it's not given the budget necessary.
They just don't want to. Not malicious, just ignorant and disrespectful of their users.
Then maybe they should be growing their customer support capacity along with their business. It drives me crazy how big companies have normalized cutting those departments down to anemic proportions. Especially those where you're a paying customer.
It's malice from whoever is responsible for under-staffing. It's also malice to prioritize the squeaky wheel for optics; it's intentional to reduce the spread of the knowledge of how unresponsive they are.
There’s no need for benefit of the doubt when it comes to the level of support provided by tech companies.
Bad support by tech companies is a conscious profit-preserving choice.
Just seems like a silly rational response to the same problem.
"Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome."
> ping ~anyone on the security team
> HN provided them some bandwidth
> also works for Google support
> answered within a day earlier this year
> no reaction otherwise. It's still online.
> app stuck in limbo at Apple
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming
> given what we know publicly
> thread of evidence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence
I think the likelihood GitHub did something within 10 minutes of a post appearing on HN's front page is approximately zero.
Nobody in GitHub Trust & Safety is sat there watching HN.
An executive or communications professional who might have heard it got on HN, or seen it appear in a tool monitoring Microsoft and GitHub's mentions across the internet, and who then flagged the post, Trust & Safety would probably spend *more than 10 minutes* noticing the email or Teams message, then trying to find the right ticket internally. Then after locating the ticket you still have to investigate the facts, discuss, and click buttons to ban/delete the user.
It's (much) more likely this sat in a queue until someone got to it and the timing of it being on HN is a complete coincidence.
https://lowendbox.com/blog/will-github-ever-remove-this-null...
Not the worst thing in the world, they're easy to spot, but I'd like to see GitHub invest more time in protecting their users from falling victim to these bad actors.
There's an impersonation profile of me on Github (username happyhannob). I've reported it a while ago, received the same automated message, and no reaction otherwise. It's still online.
I guess you can't expect basic fraud prevention from a company currently building the future with AI...
Open source code is still copyrighted. What the license defines is rights that people have in distributing that code. If an unofficial repository is using open source code to ship malware, and the license that software had didn’t allow that, then the unofficial repository is still breaking copyright law despite the code being open source.
It's not illegal to send an incorrect one by mistake but GitHub probably won't process it. It's illegal to send an incorrect one intentionally. Now that it's been pointed out to you that making malware isn't a copyright violation, it's intentional if you send a DMCA anyway.
EDIT: e.g. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/trademarks/policy/