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burnte 8 hours ago

> We've now disabled these tips in pull requests created by or touched by Copilot, so you won't see this happen again for future PRs.

It's appreciated, but these weren't tips, these were ads. Tips are "Save time with keyboard shortcuts" or "Check out the latest features under 'Whats New' in the help menu!" When you name other products, that's an ad.

ChadNauseam 6 hours ago | parent [-]

That doesn't really make sense. So it's an ad for raycast? But raycast said they didn't know about it. To me the explanation makes perfect sense. "You can use this tool with raycast" seems like a very reasonable tip.

burnte 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> That doesn't really make sense. So it's an ad for raycast?

It's an ad for using CoPilot and for Raycast.

> But raycast said they didn't know about it.

If I buy a billboard that tells people to go eat at a nearby restaurant, that's ad regardless of whether or not the restaurant knows that I bought that ad.

> To me the explanation makes perfect sense. "You can use this tool with raycast" seems like a very reasonable tip.

Raycast is a paid product. Even though they have a free tier, they only have that to get people to use and like the tool enough to pay for it. They want you to use Raycast so you use CoPilot and pay for it. It's an ad.

NekkoDroid 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Cambridge Dictionary defines and ad as: a picture, short film, song, etc. that tries to persuade people to buy a product or service

My short search really didn't bring up any definition that included the need of the product/service owner knowning that the advertising is happening.

And the message very much qualifies as trying to bring people to buy raycast (or at minimum to use it which usually want people to also pay later on).

ChadNauseam 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don't see the point in arguing about the definition, but I don't think the message was trying to persuade people to buy raycast. What interest would microsoft have in that? Rather, it seems to me like it was trying to tell raycast users that they can use copilot through raycast.

Regardless, even if the dictionary definition of an ad doesn't require that the ad be created intentionally, it's still the case that if you say "ad" everyone will assume you mean something that was intentionally created to sell a product or service. I recommend checking out this classic post about the noncentral fallacy: http://worstargumentintheworld.com

skywhopper 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Dictionary definitions are not helpful in this sort of discussion. The exact definition of “ad” is not the point.

AmazingTurtle 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Bet their internal "tips team" used an LLM to generate "useful tips" for their coding agent system ;)

johnnyanmac 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Yup, broken windows all the way down, to put it kindly

skywhopper 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Tips are also not acceptable to add to PR text. It’s like the definition of a “weed”. A “tip” in the GitHub UI would make sense. But “tips” injected into my own PR text become unwelcome ads. In any case, what may be helpful “tips” today are only a gateway to straight up paid ads tomorrow. After all, I get told all the time by adtech folks that actually, the ads and all the tracking behind them are good because aren’t I glad the ads are relevant to my interests and that I’m supporting small businesses online whose shops can only exist because of the ad infrastructure. To which I say, no, they aren’t, and that’s a lie.