I just use GitHub for the basics: repo hosting, reviews and actions - what are the "social media psyop manipulations"? I've never really paid much attention to the other features.

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MisterTea an hour ago | parent | next [-]

All the metrics based around how many commits you have made, how many stars your repo has, etc. Why is that info gamified? Its a dopamine addiction channel.

	▲	tokioyoyo 39 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It’s for subset of people who cares about that. You can just blanket-ignore everyone who cares about that, and move on.
	▲	mirekrusin an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Seriously?

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ascii0eks84 6 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You outlined what it (and all git hosting other services) are for: repository hosting, optionally issue tracker, mandatorily pull requests (for syncing with master or other branches), Actions for automated steps on merge to a tracked branch.

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chicken1991 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

But now the users who only use core functions (re: repo hosting, reviews and actions) suffer when the service is down due to overreach with feature implementation.

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artyom an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

It's good you can isolate yourself from it. But there's plenty of cases.

Open source maintainers being harassed or being demanded work through Github's issues. Or being feed AI slop to review endlessly. Or recruiters filtering resumes via Github activity graphs or repository stars.

And obviously the side shady market of all of the above (e.g. buying/selling popularity).

Like the parent comment, I can't wait for social media to be completely obliterated from code repositories.

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fn-mote 35 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> Open source maintainers being harassed or being demanded work through Github's issues

This isn't "psyops". Sure, it's a bad side of social interactions, but when you interact with other people, there's always some of this - in person as well as online.

The lead-off argument here seems more like "interacting with society can be bad".

I have no argument that selling popularity is bad and filtering by stars is stupid, but I don't blame Github for any of that.

You could equally well assign the success of certain coders to YouTube because they came to attention by showing off their work in livestreams. Which I do not. They found a way to advertise their own success, but it's theirs.

	▲	artyom 25 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> The lead-off argument here seems more like "interacting with society can be bad". The argument is that there's no need for that much social interaction to produce quality code, quite the contrary, the more social interaction, the more focus is lost. I know it's an unpopular opinion, but there's a reason why the Linux Kernel communication is still done through acerbic email threads.

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creato 31 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

None of this is specific to GitHub. The exact same problems will sometimes happen any time users and developers communicate, which is a basic requirement of developing useful software. I doubt GitHub issues are worse than mailing lists or any other mechanism.

	▲	nemomarx 27 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		They almost have to be - which users will be able to get to your issues page and which will be able to find a mailing list? You'll have a much more selective audience in the latter

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ascii0eks84 5 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Demanding work isn't really an issue. Anyone can do that, and also reject the work. Dishonest actors on the other hand would take money for someone else's work.