[berkes]

I strongly believe GitHub has the same dynamics as most "big tech social media". Where anything that drives "engagement" gets prioritized. From algorithms that make alt-right/neo-nazi's more visible because the controversy drives "eyeballs" to features that are removed or never implemented because they would lower engagement.

I'm confident that GitHub has a good prediction on what will happen if they roll out features that lower the burden of maintaining a FLOSS repo. And am rather certain that several of these features also lower the engagement. And therefore will not be implemented. In other words: the needs and goals of GitHub/MSFT and those of Open Source maintainers don't align perfectly. Yet the power balance is way off, so open Source maintainers will experience pain to a level that they almost walk away in great numbers.

[ninkendo]

It would be a baffling decision for GitHub to make any product decisions based on engagement. They don’t even serve ads, what benefit do they have to an engaged user?

[berkes]

Engagement isn't just driving ads. It's driving engagement: The "toothbrush"-factor we called that in app-development: do you have an app that people pick up like their toothbrush: without much thought, several times a day?

Engagement means people have you in their workflow, on their radar. I would love it if Github is something that I don't have to think of, that is invisible and out of my mind. I'd love it if it's something I never have to visit, open, see or interact with; as as little as possible. I'd love it if it were preconfigured to take work from me rather than impose yet another inbox, timeline, bookmarks, "likes" and so on.

And if you consider "advertisements" very liberal, that's exactly what Github is: a place for companies to attract eyeballs and engagement on their software.

[ninkendo]

I think I know what engagement is, but I’m wondering why you think Microsoft benefits from me being engaged with GitHub?

[andrewaylett]

Because the known system effect means that the more arbitrary developers engage with them, the more likely it is that at least some of them will drive corporate adoption and, by extension, sales.

Tailscale put it well: https://tailscale.com/blog/free-plan

> increased word-of-mouth from free plans sells the more valuable corporate plans

[ninkendo]

Why is it a given that GitHub slowing me down by making me engaged with the site more, will make me spread more word of mouth/etc? Everyone in this thread is just assuming a link here, but I don’t see it at all.

GH annoys the shit of me by making me click more shit to get my job done, it “increases engagement”, and then… what exactly? My annoyance is supposed to lead to me… thinking about GitHub more? And thus I’ll pressure my org to use it?

This makes no sense. I hate engagement-based metrics as much as the next person but I’m not sure MS is as brain dead as to intentionally make the UX worse, to make engagement higher, and assuming that will somehow increase sales. There’s no link here.

[berkes]

I think you misunderstand me.

I'm not saying MSFT is intentionally frustrating you to increase sales.

But that, where engagement drives sales, your frustrations are disregarded.

They are different links.

MSFT could easily build a toggle to disable PRs (default, enable PRs). They have these toggles for all other features already.

They don' build this, because, as many other commentors point out, the few people that would benefit from such a toggle, don't outweigh the amount of engagement, data, and usage it generates.

I merely take that a step further: there are quite certainly many features disregarded or not even conceived that would save a (small) group immense effort. Simply because MSFT has done the excel-thingies and knows that features that make people visit GitHub less often, are not positive to their sales.

[alwaysbeconsing]

It means they keep position as dominant Git forge, mindshare: people are most familiar with them, then think of them first for Enterprise contracts, are interested in other paid product/feature (Copilot e.g.).

Side benefit to overwhelming mindshare many people expect/require the other forge to have the Github feature: being different counts as negative. This reinforces.

[barkingcat]

by hijacking the git moniker. most college students think of github before they think of git itself.

that brand power is worth billions.

[sph]

If anyone is getting promoted based on Github engagement metrics, you better believe that's what PMs are gonna optimise for.

[twp]

For an example of GitHub enraging its users and ignoring all feedback see the feedback on the new feed:

https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/13130

https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/65343

The feedback is overwhelmingly negative, and has severely disrupted many people's workflow, but GitHub doesn't even acknowledge the problem.

[delfinom]

It's enshittification. The same way LinkedIn is being turned into ...generic social media, GitHub is slowly being eaten away into serving some executive's delusions.

[throwaway17_17]

I would assume, in the context of Microsoft encouraging engagement (specifically the PR feature of GitHub), the more engagement they have the more code is put into their system, thereby allowing them more data to train Copilot and other ML models.

[cozzyd]

conspiracy theory:

GH is Microsoft's ploy to kill open source once and for all by facilitating burnout.

(obviously false, but entertaining to think about)

[voakbasda]

What makes it “obvious”? They tried to kill Linux and Open Source. I will never forgive them, and I sure as hell would never trust them not to try again.

[cozzyd]

Such conspiracies are hard to hide, so it seems quite unlikely to me (and GH was sort of like this before the MS acquisition, no?)