GitHub specifically put out a changelog about the stargazers API endpoint to restrict open access because of its use for spam and abuse. I believe this is more about user data than code. Obviously restricting public access to Git would be a different tier.
Ask HN: Is GitHub preparing to go behind a login wall?
21–30 of 42 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is GitHub preparing to go behind a login wall?
#22The whole GitHub infra is cracking under the AI-boom's increased load. This can very well be just another symptom of the same thing.
Don't buy the BS about them being overwhelmed by AI code when they've also had terrible vibe-coded feature rollouts repeatedly break the site and are trying to rapidly increase their feature surface to kill off competing test runners and review managers. Maybe github, if well managed, would struggle in the current day - but it simply isn't.
Re: Ask HN: Is GitHub preparing to go behind a login wall?
#23I can't even access that link with an account.
Re: Ask HN: Is GitHub preparing to go behind a login wall?
#24Just to nitpick, requiring a free account is substantially different from a paywall.
No, it is pretty much the same, both means agreeing to a contract.
Re: Ask HN: Is GitHub preparing to go behind a login wall?
#25The whole GitHub infra is cracking under the AI-boom's increased load. This can very well be just another symptom of the same thing.
Don't buy the BS about them being overwhelmed by AI code when they've also had terrible vibe-coded feature rollouts repeatedly break the site and are trying to rapidly increase their feature surface to kill off competing test runners and review managers. Maybe github, if well managed, would struggle in the current day - but it simply isn't.
I self-host my own code forge (a gitea instance) and I've mirrored a couple of large repositories on it. The traffic from AI crawlers was bringing my entire server to its knees. As soon as I put the large repos behind a login, my server's CPU usage dropped to ~5%. I don't doubt for a second that github is under a torrential downpour of AI crawler traffic. Those locusts destroy everything they touch.
Re: Ask HN: Is GitHub preparing to go behind a login wall?
#26Some parts of the website are explicitly login-only, yes. I sometimes tend to follow link to gh from my mail on phone where I'm not logged in and found that e.g. you can't see any CI results without logging in.
Re: Ask HN: Is GitHub preparing to go behind a login wall?
#27It basically already is. You can’t use the search logged out and my agent can’t fetch issue comments.
Re: Ask HN: Is GitHub preparing to go behind a login wall?
#28[dead]
Re: Ask HN: Is GitHub preparing to go behind a login wall?
#29I think it’s been functionally login-only for a while, unfortunately. Any time I try to use the site while logged out I immediately hit all sorts of rate limits and spam prevention measures. Issues and pull requests stop loading almost immediately. Searches are extremely restricted, like i think literally one search is all you get sometimes unless you login. It’s hard to tell how much of this is intentional and how m…
> Any time I try to use the site while logged out I immediately hit all sorts of rate limits and spam prevention measures.
When this started happening to me I realized that I can't rely on Github as infrastructure anymore. I now vendor all the repos I need.
Self-hosted forges like Forgejo make it pretty easy to mirror repos so you have everything locally. You don't get issues though.
Re: Ask HN: Is GitHub preparing to go behind a login wall?
#30Fine for my closed source stuff, but my open source work is specifically meant to be viewable, even by non-technical people doing recruitment or looking over my portfolio. I've put up with a lot of stuff, but this would be my personal last straw.
It just pisses me off bro like from every angle ai is trying to fuck us.