[solatic]

> look at it from the perspective of users

It sounds like your perspective is that users don't get any value out of social media?

Why do people post photos to Instagram? Why post updates to Facebook?

You can take photos for your own benefit (like writing code for some non-GitHub-related benefit, e.g. work) and also share them on social media for your own gratification. You can live life for the fun of it and also share it on social media for your own gratification. (leave aside that social media is net-toxic, it's still worth it to understand the motivations of those who engage with social media).

Don't want to engage with the social media aspects of GitHub that they're adding (because social media is net-toxic)? Fine. Disable the achievements. They (smartly) built in that disable switch. But don't presume that there isn't a large portion of GitHub's userbase that won't get value out of this.