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Copilot edited an ad into my PR

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Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#501

Post by iso1631 »

simonw wrote: post #448
da_grift_shift wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accepting the megacorp euphemisms without critique ("product tips") is how enshittification festers.

I've not seen any evidence that these were ads and not "tips". Ads implies someone was paying for them. Promoting internal product features is not the same thing - if it was then every piece of software that shows a tip would be an ad product, and would be regulated as such.

When apple puts an advert for an apple show in front of for all mankind, that's an advert.

Maybe I put up with it and it just adds to my subconscious seething, or maybe I get the episode elsewhere because if I watch on jellyfin I don't have the advert. Of course that then harms the show as my viewing isn't counted, but they've cancelled it anyway so perhaps it doesn't really matter.

If it isn't an advert, then at very least there's a button to disable it.

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#502

Post by yarn_ »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #466
yarn_ wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Likewise, leaving AI attribution in will probably have the opposite effect as well, where a perfectly good few lines of code gets rejected because some reviewer saw it was claude and assumed it was slop. Neither of these cases seems helpful to anyone (obviously its not like AI can't write a single useable line of code)." That was my point here, it is a false signal in both directions.

According to you it’s all false. I don’t agree, and it certainly shouldn’t just be taken as a given. For instance, I would want any AI generated video showing real people to have a disclaimer. Same way we have disclaimers when tv ads note if the people are actors or not with testimonials and the like. That is not only not false, but is actually a useful signal that helps present overly deceptive practices.

I don't see what the "deceptive practices" would be though - you can just look at the code being submitted, there isn't really the same background truth involved as with "did the thing in this video actually happen?" "do these commercial people actually think this?"

If I have a block of human code and an identical block of llm code then whats the difference? Especially given that in reality it is trivial to obfuscate whether its human or LLM (in fact usually you have to go out of your way to identify it as such).

I am an AI hater but I'm just being realistic and practical here, I'm not sure how else to approach all this.

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#503

Post by wat10000 »

simonw wrote: post #448
da_grift_shift wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accepting the megacorp euphemisms without critique ("product tips") is how enshittification festers.

I've not seen any evidence that these were ads and not "tips". Ads implies someone was paying for them. Promoting internal product features is not the same thing - if it was then every piece of software that shows a tip would be an ad product, and would be regulated as such.

I could buy it if this was just being shown to the person who was using Copilot. Hey, here's a feature you might like. Seems OK. But it was put into the PR description. That gets seen by potentially many people, who are not necessarily using Copilot.

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#504

Post by embedding-shape »

Hussell wrote: post #386
rvz wrote: post #355

> "We won't do something like this again." They (Microsoft / GitHub) will do it again. Do not be fooled. Never ever trust them because their words are completely empty and they will never change.

"We" here likely refers to Tim and his current coworkers who were present to see this, not every current and future employee of Microsoft / Github. Try not to think of any organization or institution as a person, but as lots of individual people, constantly joining and leaving the group.

Yeah, which is exactly why "We won't do something like this again" has about much value as Kubernetes would have value for HN.

Microsoft (and therefore GitHub) care about money. If decision A means they get more money than decision B, then they'll go with decision A. This is what you can trust about corporations.

Individuals (who constantly join and leave a corporation) can believe and say whatever they want, but ultimately the corporation as a being overrides it all, and tries it's best to leave shareholders better off, regardless of the consequences.

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#505

Post by [deleted] »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #383
simonw wrote: post #371

In case people missed it in the other thread, GitHub have now disabled this: https://twitter.com/martinwoodward/status/203861213108446452... > We've disabled it already. Basically it was giving product tips which was kinda ok on Copilot originated PR's but then when we added the ability to have Copilot work on _any_ PR by mentioning it the behaviour became icky. Disabled product tips entirely thanks to the feedback.

I’m grateful they disabled it, but their response still feels a bit tone deaf to me. > Disabled product tips entirely thanks to the feedback. This sounds like they are saying “thanks for your input!”, when really it feels more like “if you didn’t go out of your way to complain, we would have left it in forever!”

[deleted]

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#507

Post by [deleted] »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #385
ncr100 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creepy. Looks like they rolled it back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47573233 Collection of my thoughts which don't really get to a point: - Microsoft owns GitHub, where Raycast is being mentioned thousands of times by their tooling. - Microsoft is a modern popularizer of the infamous phrase, embrace extend extinguish. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... - Microsoft has a history o…

> Microsoft has a history of monopoly behavior I just want to note that the case you link to was 25 years ago. The number of people working at Microsoft at the time who are still working there today is very small.

[deleted]

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#509

Post by hrmtst93837 »

Aurornis wrote: post #348

I actually love these ads and also the way Claude injects itself as a co-author. Seeing them is an easy signal to recognize work that was submitted by someone so lazy they couldn’t even edit the commit message. You can see the vibe coded PRs right away. I think we should continue encouraging AI-generated PRs to label themselves, honestly. I’m not against AI coding tools, but I would like to know when someone is tryin…

[flagged]

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#510

Post by butterlesstoast »

hk__2 wrote: post #361
ses1984 wrote: post #356

I asked copilot how developers would react if AI agents put ads in their PRs. >Developers would react extremely negatively. This would be seen as 1. A massive breach of trust. 2. Unprofessional and disruptive. 3. A security/integrity concern. 4. Career-ending for the product. The backlash would likely be swift and severe. Sometimes AI can be right.

It’s not really ads, it’s more like "Sent from my iPhone"-style sentences at the end of PR texts.

Agreed. Barely notice it.

-Sent from iPhone

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