[joefreeman]

Isn't 'origin' (not 'master') the convention you're referring to?

[tome]

Both "origin" and "master" are conventions. They are promoted by the tooling that gives them a sort of default status.

[saltedmd5]

In the context of the original post, he is referring to origin (the convention for a default remote repository), not master (the convention for a default branch).