[HN Gopher] If you don't opt out by Apr 24 GitHub will train on ...
___________________________________________________________________
If you don't opt out by Apr 24 GitHub will train on your private
repos
This is where you can opt out. It's absurd that they are
automatically opting users into this.
https://github.com/settings/copilot/features
Author : vmg12
Score : 514 points
Date : 2026-03-27 21:04 UTC (1 hours ago)
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| RIP all the people who have been paying Github for years and
| never happen to see the notice.
| tedivm wrote:
| I think opt out is stupid, but the notice is on every page of
| github using their banner display right now. They've also
| blasted out emails.
| flykespice wrote:
| At least they are being very upfront with it (I guess?), most
| companies just slickly add the clause on their routinely TOS
| update.
| SirensOfTitan wrote:
| If they were being honest they would ask explicitly for
| permission instead of advertising opt-out. Now you might
| ask: who will explicitly give Microsoft permission to train
| on their private works? No one will -- and that's the
| point: this is a form of theft.
| malfist wrote:
| And how many people who use git on github go to the website?
| I only do when my token has expired and I need to grab a new
| one to push again. Which is every 90 days. Github.com is
| mostly invisible infrastructure to me.
| i7l wrote:
| Thanks for flagging this!
| layer8 wrote:
| Note that "flagging" has a specific meaning on HN.
| i7l wrote:
| 10-4.
|
| I meant it in the sense of "bringing it to our collective
| attention."
| livinglist wrote:
| Thanks for posting this, I was never made aware of this by
| GitHub..
| lkbm wrote:
| If you use Github, you should have an email from ~2 days ago
| with the subject "Important Update to GitHub Copilot
| Interaction Data Usage Policy". Easy to skip over assuming it's
| just one of a million private policy update emails.
|
| If you don't use Github Copilot, this shouldn't effect you, and
| may be why you got no email. The current headline is fairly
| misleading--it's about Copilot usage, not private repos per se.
| livinglist wrote:
| I see, thanks for clarification!
| kristianp wrote:
| What's a good alternative for free private repos?
| Supermancho wrote:
| Gitlab?
|
| Microsoft services are tech debt. I moved the moment they were
| acquired and never regretted it.
| nottorp wrote:
| I opened gitlab.com and it starts with
|
| "Finally, AI for the entire software lifecycle."
|
| Not very trust inspiring, that.
|
| Can I even have git hosting without anything else being
| crammed down my throat, or it's just like Microsoft?
| eblume wrote:
| I've recently started hosting my own forgejo instance. It works
| so well! Free tailscale for connectivity. I expose mine over
| fly.io proxy, also free, but not to be done without caution.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I would've recommended codeberg but codeberg isn't the finest
| to be recommended for free private repos.
|
| I definitely feel like more can be done within this space and
| that there is space for more competitors (even forgejo
| instances for that matter)
| mrweasel wrote:
| It's a fair question, but if you need private repos, I think
| you need to start considering a paid option, or self-host.
|
| If it's really important to you that the repo is private, I'd
| self-host.
| conductr wrote:
| Just spitballing, don't use these tools myself, but isn't this
| something that should be encrypted to really prevent them from
| training? I personally don't trust anyone with my data when
| they pivot to building AI products yet claim my data wasn't a
| part of that strategy. It's too easy to hide/lie.
|
| But it always seemed to me that the UI should run locally with
| encryption keys that are shared and the service just manages
| encrypted blobs of diffs that can roll from version to version
| of encrypted data and that's about it. Granted I probably don't
| know the full workflow, i typically am a single dev on simple
| projects where I don't need 99% of the overhead these
| introduce.
| piersj225 wrote:
| I've not tried this, however https://github.com/AGWA/git-
| crypt
|
| Apparently someone has developed something similar to this
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| BitBucket.org (Atlassian)
| sebastiennight wrote:
| GitLab would be a good bet here. We started on their free tier
| and used that for a couple of years, I was very happy with it.
| Not sure how the tiers might have evolved since.
|
| And according to their PM and privacy policy, they're not
| training their models on your code[0].
|
| [0]: https://forum.gitlab.com/t/can-i-opt-out-from-my-code-
| being-...
| stephenr wrote:
| I've seen https://codefloe.com mentioned, can't say I've used
| it myself yet though.
| wuschel wrote:
| Sourcehut comes to my mind: https://sourcehut.org/
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I use Fossil for mine. Dead easy to set up, and while the
| workflow might not be great for public contributions like
| Github is, that doesn't matter on something where I'm the only
| user.
| werdnapk wrote:
| I've been using gitosis to manage private repos for almost 2
| decades now. It's extremely easy to host your own repositories.
|
| I just looked up gitosis on github though and it was last
| updated 12 years ago.... still works for me though.
|
| Overall, hosting your own repos is very easy.
| pyjarrett wrote:
| It doesn't take much power or time to run your own local git
| server. My first one which lasted years was parts I mangled
| together from old computers from garage sales.
|
| There's instructions on running a Git server in the git book:
| https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-The-Protoco...
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| Any computer you have ssh access to.
| jokoon wrote:
| weren't they already using repos for training?
| lanxevo3 wrote:
| To be precise: the opt-out is for GitHub Copilot training
| specifically, which has always required opt-in for public repos
| under their policy. The change Apr 24 is about private repos
| being included by default unless you opt out. If you're using
| Copilot in your private repos, definitely opt out unless you're
| comfortable with that. The setting is at
| github.com/settings/copilot -- takes 30 seconds.
| martinwoodward wrote:
| It wasn't previously opt-in.
|
| Previously we didn't do any training on usage. However as other
| products have come into the market they do train on usage.
| We've been training on our internal usage for just over a year
| and have seen some major improvements. For details see of the
| types of improvements we've seen from training on our internal
| usage check out this article: https://github.blog/news-
| insights/product-news/copilot-new-e...
| homebrewer wrote:
| You can always ask your parent company to train on their
| usage. I hear they have incredibly massive codebases:
| Windows, Office, MSSQL, which stay out of training data for
| some reason.
|
| I thought neural nets never repeat the training data
| verbatim, and copyright does not pass through them, so what's
| the problem?
| computomatic wrote:
| That wouldn't work. Microsoft's InfoSec team would never
| let them train a public-facing model on proprietary IP.
| (It's a funny joke, isn't it?)
| NewsaHackO wrote:
| How do you know that isn't already the case?
| IcyWindows wrote:
| Who said they don't?
| mentalgear wrote:
| This seems reasonable, maybe too much so.
|
| > If they want to incentivise people to contribute their
| sources and copilot sessions, they could easily make it opt-
| in on a per-repository basis and provide some incentive, like
| an increased token quota.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > takes 30 seconds.
|
| No, it takes an hour of perusing HN every day to stumble upon
| this. That's 20 hours per month, 240 hours per year, shall I
| bill it to GitHub or to Microsoft directly?
|
| Corrupting Steinmetz' quip to Ford: it's 30 seconds to flip the
| switch, 240 hours to know that a switch needs to be flipped.
| qaadika wrote:
| It should take 0 seconds, because I shouldn't have to do it.
|
| That's my bar. My time is my time, and anything that takes time
| from me better have a damn good excuse. Github is not bringing
| any good reasons to the table to justify making me take my time
| to protect privacy I've had by default up to now.
| ClikeX wrote:
| The setting isn't even visible to everyone. If you're currently
| in an org that manages copilot business, it's gone. I imagine
| it instantly opts you back in when you leave an org.
| starkeeper wrote:
| So now CoPilot will be EVEN better at writing viruses, worms and
| malware!
| sethops1 wrote:
| When Louis Rossmann started describing tech leadership as having
| a "rapist mentality" I brushed him off as being sensationalist.
| But actions like this make me think more and more he's right. The
| product managers pushing for changes like this are despicable
| scum.
| doubled112 wrote:
| Even the way modern software phrases questions is rapey.
|
| Imagine a man asking a woman "want to have sex? Or maybe
| later?" out of the blue, then asking her again every 3 days
| until she says "yes"
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| The situation you describe has dynamics that don't apply when
| your windows laptop is trying to get you to install an
| update. A woman can't have 100% confidence that saying no
| won't trigger a man into rage, so just the question being
| asked at all is already a bit unpleasant. WinRAR trying to
| get me to buy a license is not as offensive because I know it
| won't beat me up for saying no.
| doubled112 wrote:
| Of course. Claiming this is a 1:1 would be wrong.
|
| However, do you think people accept Microsoft backup
| because they want a backup?
|
| Or do you think they click yes because it makes the popup
| go away for good?
|
| Wearing me down until I say yes isn't the same as just yes.
|
| It's the same dark pattern for the 10-11 upgrade. My father
| in law managed to upgrade by accident because it kept
| popping up. He didn't really make an informed choice for
| himself. One day he just couldn't figure out why everything
| was different.
| chuckadams wrote:
| Something like "tea and consent":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZwvrxVavnQ
|
| Yeah, it ain't sex, but it does still come down to basic
| respect.
| peacebeard wrote:
| "Unconscious people don't want tea." is a great line.
| kingstnap wrote:
| There is this distinct lack of giving a shit about the user
| that you see coming through in a lot of big tech nowadays.
|
| Take this extremely simple example about antenna pod. I can
| change the order and what buttons show up in the app nav bar.
| For example I can remove the "home" button or put other things
| there instead like playback history.
|
| This is a small minor point of the bigger picture. Yet there is
| this distinct sense in which when using that app I don't feel
| like I'm beholden to some chain of management in some company
| deciding they get to decide what I get to do.
|
| Like its almost unthinkable that the YouTube app let you remove
| shorts or reorder the navigation bar and decide what you wanted
| to have there.
| kepano wrote:
| I've been saying this since 2023
|
| > If your data is stored in a database that a company can freely
| read and access (i.e. not end-to-end encrypted), the company will
| eventually update their ToS so they can use your data for AI
| training -- the incentives are too strong to resist
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37124188
| cj wrote:
| Edit: Okay, sounds like you guys are pissed to the point where
| it seems like the pro tip here is to stop using GitHub.
|
| Pro tip: sign up for the business/enterprise version when
| reasonable in price.
|
| I do this with Google Workspace. You can also do it with
| GitHub.
|
| (Google doesn't train on Workspace, Github doesn't train on
| business customers, etc)
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| It's not a pro tip if it only fucks you over slightly later.
| How's the weather in Stockholm?
| thot_experiment wrote:
| Probably don't reward extortion with money.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > Google doesn't train on Workspace, Github doesn't train on
| business customers, etc
|
| ...yet
| bilbo0s wrote:
| This.
|
| The belief of business users that this will remain true is
| grounded more in hope than in cold, dispassionate, business
| based decision making.
|
| If it's not life or death, encrypt every byte of data you
| send to the cloud.
|
| If it is life or death, you should probably not be letting
| that data traverse the open internet in any form.
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| Or, they don't _train_ on it, but who 's to say they're not
| harvesting analytics which may or may or not code samples,
| prompt data, etc. Which are then laundered through some
| sort of anonymization pipeline, to the point where they can
| argue that it no longer qualifies as _your_ data, and can
| be freely trained upon.
|
| Conspiratorial thinking? Sure. But if you've been around
| for a couple decades and seen the games these people play
| (and you aren't a complete sucker), then you'll at least be
| aware that there's at least slight possibility that these
| companies can get things from their customers that they
| (the customers) did not knowingly agree to.
| schubidubiduba wrote:
| Nothing conspirational about it. Getting data that their
| users or customers don't actually intend to give is the
| bread and butter of these companies. And they will do
| what they can to get it.
| worble wrote:
| Pro tip: You could instead spend that money to spin up a
| forgejo instance for as little as $2 a month
| https://www.pikapods.com/apps#development (not affiliated,
| just a happy customer)
|
| Please don't reward these companies with money.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| I did exactly that. Containerized it and Forgejo simply
| became a small instance part of the fleet. UI is much
| snappier then GitHub. And more importantly: zero outages.
| encrypted_bird wrote:
| Or, alternatively, self-host a gitea instance!
| kriops wrote:
| No. Money-grab incoming. Use forgejo.
| groby_b wrote:
| Github's enterprise version "starts at" $21.99/seat, and
| requires you to "contact sales".
|
| And I don't see any mention that that exempts you from being
| trained on. (Yes, the blog says you're still covered, but at
| that price I'd like to see a contract saying that)
| saghm wrote:
| At the risk of stating the obvious, I don't think it makes
| sense to reward them with money for trying to pull a bait-
| and-switch on this.
| Lio wrote:
| An enterprise licence won't save you, Google, Microsoft, et
| al have happily been breaking copyright laws for years.
|
| If the publishing industry can't win a case against the AI
| firms then you don't stand a chance when you finally find out
| they've been training on your private data the whole time.
|
| They can tell you one thing and do the opposite and there's
| effectively nothing you can do about it. You'd be a fool to
| trust them.
| mememememememo wrote:
| Yes I think you are right. Even a super ethical company can be
| taken over. There may be exceptions but it is more luck. I work
| for a SP500 that absolutely won't dont this and locks down prod
| access so a rogue staff can't do it. But if Larry or Zuck or
| Bezos buys them out, who knows.
| miohtama wrote:
| Microsoft would never do this
|
| (-:
| moralestapia wrote:
| Thank you for your service. We really need more "canaries in
| the mine" giving out early warnings of things that might not be
| evident on a first glance.
|
| Any takes on what 2029 will look like? (related to this topic,
| ofc)
| chistev wrote:
| Now this is sarcasm. Lol
| cinntaile wrote:
| It seems like you do need the smileys or the /s to
| understand when something is and isn't sarcasm.
| slowhadoken wrote:
| I'm still concerned about MS using the code I write on my
| laptop to train AI. Tinfoil hat wearing Linux users are
| starting to make a lot of sense to me.
| DougN7 wrote:
| I thought that's more what the CoPilot change is really about
| - not your repo, but all the code CoPilot read while it is
| offering helpful completions, etc - so literally the code on
| your laptop. I cancelled my account.
| b112 wrote:
| It's not tinfoil, it's aluminum foil. I.. I mean, I _heard_
| it 's that.
| qaadika wrote:
| It's been interesting the past year or so watching myself
| turn more and more into one of the tin-foil wearing linux
| users. I'm not sure how it happened, but self-hosting became
| more and more alluring and hyperfocusing on taking as much
| data as I can offline became worth spending entire weekends
| on.
|
| I didn't become paranoid, everybody else didn't!
| hugodan wrote:
| and it is not end-to-end encrypted if you don't own the keys,
| avoid bullshit
| random3 wrote:
| The "do it first, apologize later" will be the general
| principle with anything. It's going to be hard and futile to
| prove even if they don't do it through ToS first. Amazon has
| one of the largest corporate training sets out there:)
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| You're right, of course, and I find it frustrating that people
| are so thick as to not see your claim as obvious.
|
| Stallman is always right.
| maxloh wrote:
| Context: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/188488
|
| TLDR: As long as you aren't using Copilot, your code should be
| safe (according to GitHub). What data are you
| collecting? When an individual user has this setting
| enabled, the interaction data we may collect includes:
| - Outputs accepted or modified by the user - Inputs sent to
| GitHub Copilot, including code snippets shown to the model
| - Code context surrounding the user's cursor position -
| Comment and documentation that the user wrote - File names,
| repository structure, and navigation patterns -
| Interactions with Copilot features including Chat and inline
| suggestions
| mondainx wrote:
| Get ready for some dope code... ;)
| yonatan8070 wrote:
| How do I opt out of this for my own private repos? I don't see
| anything related to this as I've got a ton of settings for
| Copilot itself (I have access to Copilot through my work org)
| hedayet wrote:
| Under privacy.
|
| > Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training
| yonatan8070 wrote:
| Strange, looks like I don't have that option at all
|
| https://postimg.cc/LJD5w1rv
| sdoering wrote:
| I don't see this. Might be a regional/geofenced thing with
| the EU, not sure. Or because I have a corporate Copilot
| license through my day job org.
| peacebeard wrote:
| I don't see it there, but I do see it in screenshots online.
| Maybe it was removed or moved.
| lkbm wrote:
| Still at
| https://github.com/settings/copilot/features#copilot-
| telemet... for me.
|
| It's not a new setting, fwiw. I opted out years(??) ago.
| peacebeard wrote:
| Huh, there must be some reason it shows up for some
| people but not others. Weird.
| jamie_ca wrote:
| https://github.com/settings/copilot/features, it's near the
| bottom "Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training"
| forthac wrote:
| I believe it is under:
|
| Settings->Copilot->Features->Privacy=>[ Allow GitHub to use my
| data for AI model training
|
| Allow GitHub to collect and use my Inputs, Outputs, and
| associated context to train and improve AI models. Read more in
| the Privacy Statement. ]
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| Thanks for the heads up, I assumed they had already done this
| with my data.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Probably did. Now comes the legal ass-covering.
| hedayet wrote:
| To Github's credit, they have been showing a banner consistently.
| To my discredit - I never bothered to read that banner until I
| saw this HN headline
| jmward01 wrote:
| I've never seen the banner. Where does this show up?
| daveguy wrote:
| Probably have to have adblockers turned off.
| roegerle wrote:
| right up top. I'm not sure how anyone could miss it.
| dotancohen wrote:
| $ git pull $ vim foo.rs $ git commit $
| git push
|
| That's how.
| jmward01 wrote:
| exactly this. I rarely need to go to the site.
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| It's been on top of the web UI for 2 or 3 days now.
|
| You might have closed it...
|
| Just go to your account settings and find the opt-out option.
| nottorp wrote:
| How does that help if you don't go to the github site but just
| use git from the command line?
| lkbm wrote:
| They also sent an email.
| nottorp wrote:
| Did they? Not to me, and I have a 'review this new sign in'
| from 4 days ago so them emailing me works.
| _pdp_ wrote:
| I have never seen any app reset/loose setting before.
| lkbm wrote:
| What are you referring to? I set this to "Disabled"
| months/years ago and it's retained the disabled setting.
| _pdp_ wrote:
| So? You guarantee that this setting is durable and will
| never revert? Or you guarantee that no client-side bug on
| that page will not override the setting with null value
| when you click save on something else? Please.
| tomwheeler wrote:
| And even if you read the banner on the site, the email they
| sent, and the announcement itself, you would not see
| instructions that mention the specific thing(s) you must change
| in order to opt out.
|
| Sure, you can poke around in the settings and find one that you
| believe opts you out, but in lieu of clear and explicit
| instructions from GitHub, you'll have no way to find out. Only
| the possibility of finding out later that you guessed wrong.
| landl0rd wrote:
| This headline is false; it will not go take your private repos
| and dump them into a training dataset. Rather, GitHub will train
| on your copilot interactions with your private repos. If you do
| not use copilot, this makes no difference to you, though you
| should probably still turn it off.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| That's also my read of the flag. But if they can train co pilot
| on input, I don't see what prevents them from training copilot
| on the code itself. In a court case they would simply say the
| opt in meant we can train from input. That's all we did.
| olejorgenb wrote:
| To be fair, they display it reasonable prominently in GitHub
| when you are logged in. Given that, I feel the post title
| fall under the click bait category. I was fully aware of the
| Co-pilot opt-out change, but still clicked due the phrasing
| of the title.
| dotancohen wrote:
| What if one of my contributors uses copilot?
| computomatic wrote:
| Then GitHub will train on their inputs, which includes your
| code.
|
| Doesn't seem to leave non-enterprise projects with much
| choice but to ban contributors from using copilot (to
| whatever extent they can - company policy, etc.)
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| I think this kind of nuance is useless or even harmful. That
| might be how it is _now_ but they 'll change it when you're not
| looking.
|
| You see coders have this reasoning flaw where they go "Oh I've
| understood the system, now I can work out all the ramifications
| of my actions", and then they get tricked at every step of the
| life.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I wonder how effective it would be to sabotage the training by
| publishing deliberately bad code. A FizzBuzz with O(n^2)
| complexity. A function named "quicksort" that actually implements
| bogosort. A "filter_xss" function that's a no-op or just does
| something else entirely.
|
| The possibilities are endless. I thought of this after
| remembering seeing a post a couple months ago about how it
| doesn't take a significant amount of bad data to poison an LLM's
| training.
| munk-a wrote:
| Probably extremely ineffective, it's an issue of scale and
| unless you really automate the terrible code generation and
| somehow manage to make it distinct enough in style that it
| isn't easy to detect and eliminate wholesale then you just
| won't have the volume to significantly impact the result set.
|
| I'm absolutely sure that there are state actors with gigantic
| budgets that are putting a lot of effort into similar attacks,
| though.
| shell0x wrote:
| Shouldn't this be "Tell HN"?
| jollyllama wrote:
| It's not clear to me what happens to personal repos if you're
| getting Copilot for work, or where to disable it there.
| djsavvy wrote:
| yeah, how can I view the settings on my own personal account if
| my employer is managing the copilot settings?
| 13415 wrote:
| It is the feature "Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model
| training" that needs to be disabled. Right?
|
| Or am I missing some trick / dark GUI pattern? Just want to make
| sure.
| martinwoodward wrote:
| No we won't. Details here https://github.blog/news-
| insights/company-news/updates-to-gi...
|
| For users of Free, Pro and Pro+ Copilot, if you don't opt out
| then we will start collecting usage data of Copilot for use in
| model training.
|
| If you are a subscriber for Business or Pro we do not train on
| usage.
|
| The blog post covers more details but we do not train on private
| repo data at rest, just interaction data with Copilot. If you
| don't use Copilot this will not affect you. However you can still
| opt out now if you wish and that preference will be retained if
| you decide to start using Copilot in the future.
|
| Hope that helps.
| BoredPositron wrote:
| Yes you do? If a user uses any form of copilot in one of his
| repos except ofc enterprise, says so right in the blog post.
| These aktshually corporate technicality defense posts aren't
| helping, they just end up making you personally look a bit
| fishy.
| mrits wrote:
| Thanks for confirming you train on our data
| jffry wrote:
| It's unnecessarily splitting hairs.
|
| > interaction data--specifically inputs, outputs, code
| snippets, and associated context [...] will be used to train
| and improve our AI models
|
| So using Copilot in a private repo, where lots of that repo
| will be used as context for Copilot, means GitHub will be using
| your private repo as training data when they were not before.
| tptacek wrote:
| No it isn't. Most people don't use Copilot, so this term
| change won't effect most people. You can reasonably be
| unhappy about it anyways (or unreasonably still be using
| Copilot in 2026), but it's still ultra-useful information for
| them to add to the discussion.
| pistoriusp wrote:
| I don't use copilot, but somehow was subscribed... I
| probably clicked something long ago and it just remained
| active.
| tptacek wrote:
| They're only training on interactions with Copilot, not
| with the full contents of repos that happen to be
| subscribed to Copilot.
| input_sh wrote:
| They "gift you" a free standard plan if you have above a
| certain (non-transparent) level of stars, I don't think
| you can even disable your "subscription" if you get it
| for free.
| millisecond wrote:
| Next step they'll rebrand search as "Copilot Search" or
| auto enable pull-request AI reviews (unless you hear about
| it and turn each off) and we'll all be "users".
|
| Boiling the frog with a Venn diagram.
| kelvinjps10 wrote:
| It's automatically enabled for example the other day I did
| a commit directly on GitHub and AI generated commit popup
| it had to read the code to work
| themafia wrote:
| > Most people don't use Copilot
|
| So why do any of this at all? You're putting a large part
| of your customer base on edge in order to improve a service
| that "most people don't use." The erosion of trust this
| brings doesn't seem like a worthwhile or prudent sacrifice.
| tptacek wrote:
| You're asking me to explain Microsoft AI strategy? Your
| guess is as good as mine.
| srik wrote:
| Make it opt-in then.
| _pdp_ wrote:
| Copilot, or "chat with Copilot" is a button that is
| available on every page right next to the search bar.
|
| I don't have to be a Copilot user to click on it.
|
| This change is malicious, and it doesn't only affect
| Copilot users. It affects everyone on the platform!
| pverheggen wrote:
| Isn't this pretty standard, using your interaction data for
| training and making it opt-out? Claude Code, Codex,
| Antigravity etc. all do the same. Private repo doesn't make a
| difference as they have a local copy to work from.
| SirensOfTitan wrote:
| Right, but it shouldn't be opt-out only to begin with. It's a
| dishonest pattern that relies on people not noticing. Honest
| use of data is a "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion" moment
| for me -- if this is how you're acting when engaging with
| customers explicitly, I don't trust you to resist the
| temptation to tap into my data privately. AI companies already
| have trained their models illegally against the intellectual
| property of all of humanity with little consent along the way.
|
| Honestly, if you work at GitHub, maybe you should focus on your
| uptime -- it's awful.
| grepfru_it wrote:
| Back in my day someone would post a HN article to the internal
| slack in order to sway conversation in their favor. Glad to see
| its still happening! :D
| andoando wrote:
| Thats still pretty bad. Its no longer private if all your code
| goes through LLM training set and is resurfable to everyone
| publicly.
|
| Why would I ever use copilot on any code Id want to be kept
| private? Labling it a private repo and having a tiny clause in
| the TOS saying we can take your code and show it to everybody
| is just an upright lie
| NewsaHackO wrote:
| I mean, you shouldn't send data to _any_ SaaS LLM for code
| you want to be private, unless you have had them sign some
| sort of contract saying they will not train on your use. In
| fact, it is probably never a good idea to send anything you
| want to be private off premises unencrypted.
| munk-a wrote:
| The initial title and your reply are both too broad to be fully
| accurate. By April 24th Github will train on private repos
| (assuming a flag isn't set) but this change is limited to just
| non-Business/Pro users. So a number of private repos will be
| effected but it won't automatically affect all private repos
| (so my panic check on our corporate account wasn't necessary
| _yet_ ).
|
| I am not certain if you're a spokesperson for github - but it's
| good to be careful in your language. Instead of "No we won't" a
| lead like "That isn't entirely accurate" would be more
| suitable. In the end both the original post title and your
| reply have ended up being misleading.
| tadfisher wrote:
| > By April 24th Github will train on private repos
|
| This statement itself is misleading. Also, GitHub probably
| should have seen this coming.
|
| They are not doing what I initially thought, which is
| slurping up your private repo, wholesale, into its training
| set. You don't have to opt out of anything to prevent that.
|
| They _are_ slurping any context and input containing code
| from your private repo which is provided to them as part of
| using Copilot.
|
| So, in addition to the opt-out setting, there is an even
| easier way to avoid providing them your private repository
| data to train AI models, and that's by continuing to not use
| Copilot.
| layer8 wrote:
| In the EU, opt-out is not a legally valid way to obtain the
| necessary consent. How do you plan to handle this?
| booi wrote:
| probably by paying the fine and doing it anyway
| x0x0 wrote:
| For personal data. I don't believe you can reasonably claim
| code is personal data any more than a hammer is your personal
| data.
| layer8 wrote:
| Every Git commit is likely to contain personal data, in the
| form of the author's name and email address. Furthermore,
| unless GitHub is prohibiting users from submitting personal
| data via their ToS (which, given the above, would be a bit
| difficult), the only thing that matters is whether the data
| in fact contains personal data or not. GitHub cannot just
| assume that it doesn't. And processing that data for new
| purposes requires user consent.
| daveguy wrote:
| Nice try. If you're training on "inputs" to Copilot then you
| are training on the private repos.
|
| This suspect denial is why I will get my clients moved off of
| github.
| ethanwillis wrote:
| "hope that helps"
|
| Why the smug sarcastic attitude? nah, fuck github i'm out.
| wewtyflakes wrote:
| If Copilot later adds a feature like "Scan your repo for
| vulnerabilities using Copilot <opt-out>", then that would both
| fit your criteria, and the baiting outrage of the original
| poster, in one swoop! Of course, Microsoft would _never_ do
| that, right?
| edelbitter wrote:
| > If you don't use Copilot this will not affect you.
|
| How does this work for a private repository with access granted
| to additional contributors? Which setting is consulted then?
| dataflow wrote:
| Say someone has a very sensitive secret (say, a Bitcoin private
| key) in their free private Github repo, and uses Copilot on
| that repo and touches the secret with it. Would you be willing
| to assure here that toggling that setting would not affect the
| likelihood of that secret leaking, and that that likelihood is
| also unaffected by whether the account is Business or Free?
| _pdp_ wrote:
| So you will train on data collected from free users working on
| GPL and copyrighted projects?
| DougN7 wrote:
| And on users that don't even use github, other than the
| required account to use CoPilot in Visual Studio.
| _pdp_ wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| This affects anyone using VS Code or Copilot with
| proprietary data, including all the users automating
| workflows through the Copilot SDK and the like. A perfect
| storm.
|
| Did anyone from GitHub's legal team actually authorise
| this, or did they use Copilot to sign off on it?
| inopinatus wrote:
| "Opt-out" is an egregiously toxic and unethical approach to
| consent and should be illegal everywhere that it isn't already.
|
| I didn't think Github had much of a brand left to damage, but
| here we are.
| gortok wrote:
| This is a distinction without a difference, according to the
| text of that enable/disable dialog,
|
| > Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training: Allow
| GitHub to collect and use my Inputs, Outputs, and associated
| context to train and improve AI models. Read more in the
| Privacy Statement.
|
| "Associated Context" is the repo. If I use copilot, I'm giving
| it access to my repo.
|
| I don't know in all the ways copilot can be triggered, and I'm
| not certain that I could stop it from being triggered, given
| Microsoft's past behaviors in slapping Copilot on everything
| that exists.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| As others have pointed out, this is somewhat dishonest. Which
| is depressing, if you represent GitHub.
| wswope wrote:
| What a wildly disingenuous take. Speaking earnestly from one
| human to another: your behavior and work is shameful, and you
| should feel embarrassed by your actions, Martin.
|
| You're laundering the code of users who don't opt-in through
| Copilot users who do, to read in as many LoC as possible. It's
| clear as day to everyone not morally bankrupt.
| Jabrov wrote:
| Can't you just make it opt-in?
|
| No? Because no one would opt-in, you say?
|
| Wow. It's almost like this is a user-hostile feature that
| breaks the implicit promise behind a "private" repo.
| saghm wrote:
| Yes, you will. This is what the setting says on my account when
| I clicked the link:
|
| > model training
|
| > Allow GitHub to collect and use my Inputs, Outputs, and
| associated context to train and improve AI models. Read more in
| the Privacy Statement
|
| Are you seriously trying to claim that the code isn't input,
| output, or associated context of Copilot operating on a private
| repo? What term do you think better applies to the code that's
| being read as input, used as context, and potentially produced
| as output?
| ziml77 wrote:
| I don't like that they are training on any interactions with
| Copilot by default but training on something that you've put
| through Copilot yourself is much different than them just
| shoving all the private repos currently on Github into the
| training data.
| Jolter wrote:
| If you are not willing to migrate out of GitHub, what you can
| do is to avoid using Copilot on your private repository.
| saghm wrote:
| I don't use Copilot, and I don't have anything I
| particularly care about in private repos on my account on
| Github. My reaction here is entirely based on principles,
| not how I'm going to be personally affected.
| ziml77 wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification. The OP here made me think I
| missed something in both the blog post about the change and in
| the available settings.
| irishcoffee wrote:
| I am aware of CUI data hosted on github by corporate entities.
| You're saying you'll essentially violate the entire point of
| CUI?
|
| That's fucking terrifying.
| languid-photic wrote:
| Appreciate the clarification. But, it's still not great.
|
| To the PM behind this - developers are sensitive to this kind
| of thing. Just make it opt-in instead?
| qaadika wrote:
| > https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/updates-to-
| gi...
|
| > Should you decide to participate in this program, the
| interaction data we may collect and leverage includes:
|
| > - Outputs accepted or modified by you
|
| > - Inputs sent to GitHub Copilot, including code snippets
| shown to the model
|
| > - Code context surrounding your cursor position
|
| > - Comments and documentation you write
|
| > - File names, repository structure, and navigation patterns
|
| > - Interactions with Copilot features (chat, inline
| suggestions, etc.)
|
| > - Your feedback on suggestions (thumbs up/down ratings)
|
| "should you decide to participate.."??? You didn't ask if I
| wanted to participate. You asked if I didn't.
|
| I didn't get to decide to participate. I had to decide _not_
| to. You made me do work to prevent my privacy from being
| violated.
| vscode-rest wrote:
| Do you use copilot?
| qaadika wrote:
| First response: It doesn't matter if I use copilot _right
| now_. It matters if I will ever use copilot in the future.
| Opting-out is future-focused. What if I said "no, I don't
| use copilot, so I don't need to opt out", then a year from
| now start using copilot, completely forgetting about this
| whole debacle? That's the evil of opt-out. My inaction only
| benefits them, never me.
|
| Second response: Maybe? I press the little button to auto-
| generate commit titles and messages that showed up in my
| Github Desktop. Does that count?
|
| I'm asking sincerely. I don't "use Copilot" as in using it
| in VS Code or while writing code, so I'm honestly not sure
| if I am.
| mrdependable wrote:
| I think the problem is more with using PRIVATE repos. My
| letters are also private and I would be pretty pissed if the
| mail carrier was reading them. Why does GitHub think it has the
| right to do this?
| pesus wrote:
| Why not get user consent first?
| ClikeX wrote:
| How do you handle accounts that have copilot managed by an
| organisation? I've seen several cases where people cannot opt
| out their account because of the org connection (the option
| just isn't there in the settings). What happens to their
| account the moment they leave that org?
| anarticle wrote:
| tl;dr: installed gitlab.
|
| I'm not bidding against you to not train on my data.
| elAhmo wrote:
| Defaulting to opt-in is a malicious move, no matter how you
| present things.
| johndough wrote:
| Under GDPR, opt-out is not considered informed consent, and
| repositories can contain personally identifiable information,
| which fall under GDPR. Do you think differently, or do you
| think ignoring the law will be worth it?
| daft_pink wrote:
| is there an easy way to shift all your repos to gitlab or to
| private if you don't use ci/etc?
| rakel_rakel wrote:
| I'm looking forward to the class action lawsuit, even if only to
| establish a precedent!
|
| I don't have much hope, but I wish that ignoring software
| licensing and attribution at scale becomes harder than it
| currently seems.
| rrgok wrote:
| They would've done the math. Even with a class action they will
| come up positive. It just another bill for them.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe] Discussion on source:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47521799
| mxtbccagmailcom wrote:
| Time to put adversarial code into GitHub to pollute the training
| set?
| ethagnawl wrote:
| `:(){ :|:& };:`s all the way down.
| encrypted_bird wrote:
| Ah, yes, the ol' Bobby Tables maneuver. Haha.
| dalemhurley wrote:
| At least they are giving you the option to opt out, many other
| providers just trained on the source code.
| uberman wrote:
| If even one person in a repo does not disable this will copilot
| have full access to the repo? How can I determine if other
| members of my team have turned this off or not?
| hirako2000 wrote:
| The same way you can't determine whether a team member pulling
| the repo dumped the code into a prompt.
|
| It's convenient for MS to make this opt in by default for sure.
| elAhmo wrote:
| It's not convenient, it is a deliberate decision.
| harikb wrote:
| The UI options are also shady af. The setting reads
|
| Enabled - " _You_ will have access to this feature " as help
| text. Disabled - " _You_ will not have access to this feature ".
|
| WTF does that mean?
| gs17 wrote:
| I saw that too, it feels like it's worded to make it sound like
| it's mandatory for Copilot. Based on their blog post the
| "feature" is them training on your data.
| mxtbccagmailcom wrote:
| Time to place some adversarial code into GitHub to pollute
| training set?
| jambutters wrote:
| Where does it say it will train on private? This seems like a
| security nightmare if it trains on hardcoded keys
| chistev wrote:
| Having hardcoded keys is a security nightmare regardless.
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| Jokes on them, my private repos are total dog dookie. If nobody
| but me can see the code then I don't have to worry about style,
| structure, comments, or any other best practices.
|
| You don't want an LLM trained on my private repos. Trust me.
| aduwah wrote:
| I will join the club. +1 for ruining M$ AI with my garbage code
| forinti wrote:
| Poisoning LLMs is an interesting path of resistance.
| rrgok wrote:
| I'm gonna put a license fee on all my repos. 10% of revenue if my
| private repos have been used for AI training. 5% on all my other
| repos.
| contingencies wrote:
| Thank you.
| shevy-java wrote:
| Microslop tries to make money off of our data on github. Not a
| big surprise though.
| jmward01 wrote:
| They just lost my repos. I can not believe they snuck this in. My
| level of anger right now is far higher that I ever wanted to
| feel. I went to API access for anthropic, paying more in the
| process, to avoid them training on my code. And GH just -adds-
| this, without telling me? Without a prompt. They are dead to me.
| ares623 wrote:
| make sure you opt-out anyway before deleting your account.
| they'll probably train on some archived version if it sees your
| profile didn't opt-out at some point.
| gverrilla wrote:
| honest question: is there any realistic mechanism that will
| make them accountable if let's say they just train on 100% of
| repos without regards to opt-ins? I operate under the premise
| these tech companies can do whatever they want and there's
| very little oversight.
| api wrote:
| Not your storage, not your data (unless it's encrypted with keys
| you control).
| munk-a wrote:
| The only setting I'm seeing is on a per-user basis. Does anyone
| know how to blanket disable training on an organizational basis?
|
| Is there any information about how much information from an
| organization managed repo may be trained on if an individual user
| has this flag enabled? Will one leaky account cause all of our
| source code to be considered fair game?
| moralestapia wrote:
| Is this the case even if you're a paid customer?
|
| If so, this might be illegal.
| tartoran wrote:
| If you opt out Github will probably still train on your private
| repo. Just migrate.
| jpcrs wrote:
| Good luck to them, my private repos are probably some of the
| worst code humanity has produced.
| kace91 wrote:
| How's the codeberg experience nowadays? I think it's finally time
| to switch for me.
| endofreach wrote:
| How did people forget that github was purchased by that one
| company?
| bsza wrote:
| I've been encrypting my private git repos for a while because I
| had suspected they were going to do something like this.
|
| https://github.com/flolu/git-gcrypt
|
| It's very easy to set up and integrates nicely into git.
| Obviously only works if you don't need Actions or anything that
| requires Github to know what's in your repo (duh).
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I started self hosting my own git on a digital ocean droplet with
| Gitea (1). It's been unbelievably fantastic and trivially easy to
| manage experience and I can make them public and invite contrib
| ans do integrations ... I see zero downsides
|
| I see no reason to ever go back to holding my code elsewhere.
|
| Don't forget git is fairly new
|
| When I first started doing production code it was pre-github so
| we used some other kind of repo management system
|
| This is a perfect example of where the they're starting to
| cannibalize their base and now we have the ability to get away
| from them entirely.
|
| (1) https://about.gitea.com/
| prmoustache wrote:
| While I understand the network effect of github for public
| project, I don't really understand why one would want to use it
| for private repos.
|
| There are tons of git providers including free ones that include
| full gitlab/gitea/forgejo to get similar features to github and
| there is nothing more easy to self host or host on a vps with
| near zero maintenance.
| w10-1 wrote:
| Sorry, which ones support 2-GB private repositories and are
| supported by package managers?
| woodylondon wrote:
| jokes on them - all the code in all my repos are written by AI :)
| yakbarber wrote:
| train on my private code? jokes on them
| mrled wrote:
| I'm curious about specific consequences of this. I tend to think
| the importance of code secrecy has always been exaggerated (there
| are specific exceptions like hedge fund strategies and malware),
| even more so now in this post-Claude world. Does anyone have
| specific things they're trying to avoid by opting out of this?
| jawilson2 wrote:
| Algorithms and models for a proprietary trading system? My
| personal notes? The latex text of my phd thesis?
|
| I will go screaming and kicking and fighting into this
| dystopian nightmare post-privacy shithole world that so many
| people seem fine with. If I have to move off of every service
| or technology to maintain some semblance of privacy so be it.
| mrled wrote:
| Well, mostly I was thinking about code, and aside from the
| specific exceptions of trading algorithms (which I was trying
| to get at when I said hedge fund strategies), and now PhD
| theses (good point, at least if you're talking pre-
| publication), I'm still having trouble understanding the
| threat model even if AI did train on most proprietary,
| private business code. Can AI training on a CRUD app's code
| damage a business?
|
| And I have the same question about private notes, or even a
| diary. Can an AI training on a bunch of personal stuff damage
| the person that wrote it?
|
| Do you really keep trading algorithms on github?
| sedatk wrote:
| I have an individual GitHub Copilot Pro subscription and also am
| a member of an Enterprise account that has one of its GitHub
| Copilot Business seats assigned to me. The opt-out setting
| doesn't appear on my individual profile anymore. However, I want
| to be able to use individual GitHub Copilot subscription for my
| individual work, and it seems like I can't do it anymore as
| Enterprise has taken over all my preferences. What a mess.
| _pdp_ wrote:
| Rather than defending this absurd decision, GitHub could
| instantly win back trust by admitting they f*** up and reversing
| it entirely.
|
| If they want to incentivise people to contribute their sources
| and copilot sessions, they could easily make it opt-in on a per-
| repository basis and provide some incentive, like an increased
| token quota.
|
| This is not hard.
| bdangubic wrote:
| That training will be like "OMG this is horrible... WAIT I wrote
| this shit"
| jacamera wrote:
| Lots of hair splitting in the comments. The service is so
| unreliable at this point that I don't trust them to not train on
| private repos even accidentally. You're one vibe-coded PR away
| from having all your data scooped up regardless of any policy or
| intention.
| totierne2 wrote:
| There is always other peoples ftp servers as Linus used to say.
| bolangi wrote:
| Hah, github can have my crap code. Anyone trained on it will be
| in for a world of hurt :-)
| hilti wrote:
| Oh - they didn't train silently already?! ;-) Going to move my
| repositories then next week.
| frizlab wrote:
| Is there a way to disable training on repositories that are in
| organizations?
| w10-1 wrote:
| https://github.com/settings/copilot/features
|
| The feature to opt out is at the bottom under privacy: "Allow
| GitHub to use my data for AI model training"
|
| TIL: you cannot opt out of a copilot-pro subscription. How is it
| a subscription if I can't cancel?
|
| (Honestly, who has time to evade all these traps? Or to migrate
| 150+ repo's on 6+ machines...)
| tantalor wrote:
| "Don't touch my garbage!"
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| Don't give your code to Microsoft if you don't want them to have
| your code.
|
| This setting will make no difference to whether your code is fed
| into their training set. "Oops we accidentally ignored the
| private flag years ago and didn't realise, we are very sorry, we
| were trying to not do that".
| GMoromisato wrote:
| I'm sure this is just me, but I don't mind if AI trains on my
| public or private repos. I suspect my imagination is just not
| good enough to come up with downsides.
|
| So far it's been a benefit because coding agents seems to
| understand my code and can follow my style.
|
| I don't store client data (much less credentials) in my repos
| (public or private) so I'm not worried about data leaks. And I
| don't expect any of my clients to decide to replace me and vibe
| code their way to a solution.
|
| I do worry (slightly) about large company competitors using AI to
| lower their prices and compete with me, but that's going to
| happen regardless of whether anyone trains on my code. And my own
| increases in efficiency due to AI have made up for that.
| wilsonjholmes wrote:
| At least they are finally being honest about the direction of the
| business. I have thought for a long while that they were already
| doing this and just not telling anyone...
| hexage1814 wrote:
| If you opt out... they will also train on your private repos.
| pokot0 wrote:
| while I agree, I understood this is only when you use copilot? if
| not, their communication is very misleading
| uwagar wrote:
| why all u programmers cant make ur own website and host ur own
| git servers?
| nitrogen99 wrote:
| So? It's not like some human is spying on your private emails or
| chats. This is just code. Relax.
| jongjong wrote:
| Wow. This is theft. Should be illegal! It's like if I own a vault
| storage business and I am keeping other people's gold in my
| vaults and then I just take all the gold for myself and claim
| that the customers should have opted out of me stealing their
| gold but they missed the deadline...
| VladVladikoff wrote:
| The most shocking part of this news to me is that they aren't
| doing this already.
| shamelessdev wrote:
| This is the exact reason I vibe coded "artifact".
|
| Not for commercial success, just wanted a git and github like
| experience for my new game project.
|
| Then I started getting into features specific to game dev like
| moving away from LFS and properly diffing binaries.
|
| paganartifact.com/benny/artifact
|
| Mirror: GitHub bennyschmidt/artifact
| leej111 wrote:
| Based
| maplethorpe wrote:
| What's the best way to poison my repos to sabotage LLM training?
| Asking for a friend.
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| Put an ORM in your private repo which randomly 1% of the time
| calls DROP TABLE.
| gafferongames wrote:
| If you guys didn't already realize that Microsoft was a garbage
| company in the 90s I really don't know what to say...
| piekvorst wrote:
| Personally, I don't mind. Train however you want.
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