mccMay 19, 2025

Discovery: The "copilot" bot user that Microsoft will soon be flooding your github repos with garbage content from is implemented in some sort of special way that exempts it from the "block" feature you would normally be able to block other users/bots with

https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/159749

Allow us to block Copilot-generated issues (and PRs) from our own repositories · community · Discussion #159749

Select Topic Area Product Feedback Feature Area Issues Body I find the following two news items on the front page: https://github.blog/changelog/2025-05-19-creating-issues-with-copilot-on-github-co...

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Show threadPhilip Mallegol-HansenMay 19, 2025

@mcc I entirely agree with your conclusion, but I think there’s one detail where I’d be a bit more charitable in my view as far as their malice simply being incompetence:

I doubt they’ve explicitly stopped you from “blocking” the bot, and instead I’d bet it’s only sort of a “user” across backend services, but not really. And so it just doesn’t support being blocked.

Show threadmccMay 19, 2025

@philip I feel you are putting words in my mouth I did not say.

EDIT: Wait, I guess I said "special-cased" on github, but I didn't say it here.

Show threadPhilip Mallegol-Hansen
@mcc Yeah, I was referring to the “special cased” mention on your feedback item :)
May 19, 2025 at 10:15pmWeb
Show threadmccMay 19, 2025
@philip Well, it seems to me "we didn't implement it as a user but rather as a backend service that sometimes appears as a user" just seems like an unusually elaborate form of "special cased".