GitHub is starting to lockdown some of the previously public data

[punkpeye]

I woke up to an alert about a database anomaly: one of the tables that we use to track stargazers was suddenly empty.

Turns out GitHub quietly made the endpoint that fetches stargazers return an empty response.

https://github.blog/changelog/2026-06-30-upcoming-access-restrictions-to-public-api-endpoints-and-ui-views/

No email or any other warning was shared with developers.

Because we were overriding stargazers every time we fetch them, this resulted in wiping all the data that we have collected over the years. In our case, this data was used to customize user experience when browsing MCP server catalog – GitHub served as the source of truth of their 'favorite servers' – a completely legitimate use case to building a community around GitHub's public data. Many more use cases like this exist.

In GitHub's own words, they are doing this to prevent "spam", but this is really just GitHub increasingly gatekeeping their data and community. Sadly, the platform that was built for open-source is no longer open.

[gnabgib]

Discussions:

GitHub Has Restricted Access to Star Data (13 points, 9 days ago, 6 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48808280

Ask HN: Is GitHub preparing to go behind a login wall? (57 points, 7 days ago, 41 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48821803

[punkpeye]

This did not get enough attention.

Does anyone know what was the precise date when this change was rolled out?

[ayarseus]

I wonder how much of their recent downtime can be attributed to the scrapers and other "automated" traffic they'd be getting these days

[punkpeye]

This data was available via API endpoints, not something that needed scraping.

[verdverm]

Stars were abused for spam, that's why it has been made private for the project owner eyes only.

You can make a GitHub app and access a user's stars with their permission. It's not gatekeeping, you have to do more to be secure about it though.