Mastodawn

Lucas de Sena May 27

TheEvilSkeleton

Given GitHub's hostile push for AI, I desperately want to move Bottles's code to GNOME GitLab and keep the Codeberg mirror up.

I'm legit so fucking tired of it. It makes it hard for me to develop Bottles without Copilot spams demotivating me. Their hostile push has gotten like Discord where everything is Nitro COPILOT THIS Nitro COPILOT THAT. I'm stuck here playing the opposite of Where's Wally: as in "try not to find any mentions of Copilot".

It's been bothering me so much that it has become more and more difficult to contribute to projects hosted on GitHub. I also get uncomfortable when I contribute to software mirrored to GitHub, which includes GNOME apps.

ity [unit X-69]May 27

@TheEvilSkeleton I only touch software hosted on GitHub when I am paid for it, lol. For hobby stuff, I just keep the patches and issues to myself, and fix it locally, or mirror a softfork on my gitea.

@TheEvilSkeleton I just turn off copilot shit in the settings. Luckily it's just one toggle.

TheEvilSkeleton May 27

@Myles124 I have no interest to use a platform that makes these "make the platform usable" options opt-in and not opt-out. It's a waste of my time, and even if it takes 30 seconds to disable it, it's 30 seconds of unwanted, unpaid, and unnecessary use of energy that ruins my experience with the platform.

@TheEvilSkeleton I completely agree.

Benedek Dévényi May 28

@Myles124 @TheEvilSkeleton it doesn't turn off every appearance of it though. For example I still get the new AI issue and PR bot button. And even if I don't see them, since other may do the AI issue and pull request spam will just get worse, and I already had enough of it.

Pietro di Caprio May 27

@TheEvilSkeleton Copilot is disabled at org level in Bottles. Both for the "Coding agent" and general "Access". What you see in the issues sidebar is a kind of advertisement suggesting you to try it but is not kicking in if you are not requesting it.

I would like to know more about the sentence «Copilot spams demotivating me», could you make an example of what Copilot does?
I'm honestly interested in understand more.

@pietrodc0 @TheEvilSkeleton
You can now ask Copilot to open issues for you on repositories, it doesn't check for duplicates and it tries to write more rather than less about something it doesn't understand.

Better yet, it will look like it was opened by the user, so before you read it, you can't known whether it was written by Copilot or not.

This is just a huge waste of time for developers, and it's just another step Microsoft makes in the enshittification of GitHub.

Pietro di Caprio May 27

@monster @TheEvilSkeleton you mean in the IDE integrations? I don't see this feature on GitHub 🤔

@pietrodc0 @TheEvilSkeleton It's part of their interactive Copilot thingy.

Od-Nan Kenobi May 27

@pietrodc0 @monster @TheEvilSkeleton it's a recent change, copilot is now integrated into the issues creator, so people that used to create low-effort, irrelevant or duplicate issues using AI (and had to copy paste before) can now do this directly from github, and are very well invited to do so by the interface

The original announcement of the feature:

https://github.blog/changelog/2025-05-19-creating-issues-with-copilot-on-github-com-is-in-public-preview/

Creating issues with Copilot on github.com is in public preview - GitHub Changelog

Say goodbye to manual, repetitive issue creation. With Copilot, creating issues for bugs, tasks, and feature requests on GitHub is now faster and easier—all without sacrificing quality. What’s new Natural…

The GitHub Blog

Pietro di Caprio May 27

@odnankenobi @monster @TheEvilSkeleton looks like I didn't receive that update yet, going to check if I can opt-in in the beta features

Pietro di Caprio May 27

@odnankenobi @monster @TheEvilSkeleton

ah, you have first of all to go in "immersive mode", need an active Copilot license (so not everyone, expecially spammers) have it, then ask to create the issue for you.

In my personal opinion is not a so pushed feature that is encouraging everyone to open bad issues with no fact checking...

Pietro di Caprio May 27

@odnankenobi @monster @TheEvilSkeleton

moreover, it's literally Chat GPT, it's going to do what asked to do. So if is not asked to check for duplicates it's not going to do it.
I'm not saying that is going to perform a proper and good check if requested, I need to perform some test before being able to provide a full feedback, but I don't see the huge mentioned problem in the room

@pietrodc0 @odnankenobi @monster @TheEvilSkeleton why try to rationalize what is undeniably an invasive advertisement for a feature of negative value?

mirkobrombin May 27

@lhp @odnankenobi @monster @TheEvilSkeleton why negative value?

@mirkobrombin @lhp @odnankenobi @TheEvilSkeleton I don't know about you, but issues filed by users commonly already lack information, how do you think this will be with an LLM that just gets a short instruction, and that doesn't check for duplicates?

mirkobrombin May 27

@monster Sounds like a personal impression rather than something based on actual data or testing. Feels more like “bot = bad” bias than a grounded argument. Don't get me wrong I am honestly not understanding the point. Can u make it clear please? Or point me to a blog post, something like that.

@mirkobrombin I'm a lot less biased about AI than many others, it's not as simple as "bot = bad".

My point is: at this time, I do not think the feature is at a stage where it should be implemented already, and the current implementation leads users to submit time-wasting issues.

I haven't thoroughly tested it, but the quick test I did showed that the bot opened an issue that had been requested 5+ times already, with a lot of "filler" text.

mirkobrombin May 27

@monster Got it

Od-Nan Kenobi May 27

@pietrodc0 @monster @TheEvilSkeleton

The main problem is AI being used as a tool to supercharge low-quality-issue spamming by people. It was already a problem for many projects, this new feature is going to make the problem a lot worse. The platform, GitHub, had a responsibility to design itself to help solve problems, not worsen them.
If repo maintainers had the choice to disable the feature for issues submitted to their repo, it would be mostly fine. I think that's the push we should make

Pietro di Caprio May 27

@odnankenobi @monster @TheEvilSkeleton

I understand what you are saying.

Given that, by documentation, the user you mention need a Copilot license to perform the actions you mention,
the place where raise these concerns, if you want them listened and evaluated, is:
https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/categories/general

Build software better, together

GitHub is where people build software. More than 150 million people use GitHub to discover, fork, and contribute to over 420 million projects.

GitHub

Od-Nan Kenobi May 28

@pietrodc0 @monster @TheEvilSkeleton I know, and thanks for leaving the link here for convenience of everyone in the thread. The intent of discussing this in here is mostly to get more people to voice this on GitHub, and also to iterate over the ideas in general

@pietrodc0 @odnankenobi @TheEvilSkeleton I mean, this just showed up on my account without me having touched anything related to it, so…

Pietro di Caprio May 27

@monster @odnankenobi @TheEvilSkeleton

basically your complain is that a commercial software shipped an update that contains new features 😅

@pietrodc0 @odnankenobi @TheEvilSkeleton No, I don't mind it being there, my concern is with the feature itself, which I know has negative consequences.

Pietro di Caprio May 27

@monster @odnankenobi @TheEvilSkeleton

negative consequences due to what?

I believe the main problem is how people uses the feature, we need to learn how to use this technology. It is super simple to access it tho is super difficult to use it properly.

At current stage the global problem is learning to leverage the presence of AI to generate positive impact.

But that has nothing to do with GitHub providing feature in home page to push their business.

@pietrodc0 @odnankenobi @TheEvilSkeleton You're laying out the exact issue this feature brings with it: people don't know how to use it properly. Leading the user to use a feature properly is the job of a project, and GitHub failed here, it's clear that this feature was rolled out without much thought.

Pietro di Caprio May 27

@monster @odnankenobi @TheEvilSkeleton

I understand what you mean, I can't agree nor disagree.

It's something new that is difficult to ship with prior training as a public commercial software.
We can't pretent GH to train anyone that could go on the platform before shipping the feature.
The world is moving fast, as the business. They must compete in a strong and hard environment where "first" values more that "better".

I'm not standing with GitHub closing my eyes. That must be clear

@pietrodc0 @odnankenobi @TheEvilSkeleton

While I definitely agree that this is nothing unique for a product like GitHub, or a company like Microsoft, bad decisions for the users can still be criticized.

As a user of GitHub, you have the freedom to move to another platform if they mess something up, and I think that Copilot's application is just another reason to do so.

Bottles is an open source project, it deserves to be hosted on a platform that shares its values, rather than the company's interests.

@monster @pietrodc0 @TheEvilSkeleton is there an easy way to detect such issues and close them with a comment to submit again without copilot?

@lw64 @pietrodc0 @TheEvilSkeleton AFAIK no, which is terrible.

TheEvilSkeleton May 27

@lw64 there is, it's called switching to a superior platform /hj

@monster @pietrodc0

TheEvilSkeleton May 27

> What you see in the issues sidebar is a kind of advertisement suggesting you to try it but is not kicking in if you are not requesting it.

That's no kind of suggestion, that's a kind of pressure that prevents me from using GitHub effectively.

David Fleetwood - RG Admin May 27

@pietrodc0 @TheEvilSkeleton Is there a plan to get gnome projects/apps entirely off of github and move them to a foss friendly environment?

Pietro di Caprio May 27

@reflex @TheEvilSkeleton

I have no answer to that question. Sorry

David Fleetwood - RG Admin May 27

@pietrodc0 @TheEvilSkeleton Given that you are a board member, perhaps it should be raised? It would be appreciated.

Pietro di Caprio May 27

@reflex @TheEvilSkeleton

I am a Foundation Member, not a Board Member. I'll forward your question to some contact but I'm not part of the meetings nor I have vote on this matter, can't promise you anything than a forward nor provide you feedback (as I'm not going to have it either)

David Fleetwood - RG Admin May 27

@pietrodc0 @TheEvilSkeleton Ah that makes sense, thanks!

@TheEvilSkeleton i don't even mind using LLMs in development but microsoft's beloved method of marketing (bombarding you with "offerings" and "features" with no way to disable them) genuinely makes the github ui insufferable

@TheEvilSkeleton after seeing this, i head to my settings and if you look at the settings for disabling it, the "Allow GitHub to use my data for product improvements" is enabled in the privacy section without my consent.

@uncomfyhalomacro @TheEvilSkeleton these models were trained on so much private data and copyrighted data (with incompatible licenses) that in a functioning, non-corrupt system they'd be illegal to use. The sanest thing to do is exterminating all language models with extreme prejudice. Delete them all. But unfortunately that will not happen. With a bit of luck though maybe the bubble will pop soon-ish.

Mandarinoo May 27

@TheEvilSkeleton
Temporary solution ofc (I would love to see more FOSS projects leaving Github), but you could permanently block all Copilot buttons etc. using Ublock Origin, assuming you‘re using web