It’s worth noting that the OP has recently acquired a 2-letter username from someone else & blogged about it: https://dev.to/yg/how-i-got-two-letter-username-on-github-i1...
I imagine there’s more to this than disclosed.
Ask HN: My GitHub account got suspended without any notice
211–220 of 279 posts
Re: Ask HN: My GitHub account got suspended without any notice
#212Whoa! I was talking about the horror stories of losing GitHub account in a several of my latest comments/threads and I get to see another one. Why wouldn't they send out a notice, at least, before deactivating an old, active account?
> Why wouldn't they send out a notice
If it was an account takeover, the malicious user would have changed the email address on account.
Re: Ask HN: My GitHub account got suspended without any notice
#213I'm sorry to break it to you. But that's basically want you agreed to by accepting their terms of service: "GitHub has the right to suspend or terminate your access to all or any part of the Website at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice, effective immediately. GitHub reserves the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason at any time." https://docs.github.com/en/github/site-policy/github-te…
I don't know why you are getting downvoted. This atrocious quote ("with or without cause") is a great find; I personally have never bothered to read Github's terms of services before. If github literally says this in its terms of service — and it does — it's definitely worth knowing, and should give github users ample food for thought.
I think the downvotes are due to people interpreting the comment as a defense of github's behaviour in this situation rather than an attack on their POS TOS.
Re: Ask HN: My GitHub account got suspended without any notice
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
OP got his 2-letter handle via a takeover request: https://dev.to/yg/how-i-got-two-letter-username-on-github-i1... edit: the ghost repo is cool trick. Is there a writeup anywhere?
The OP changed his username in github less than a month ago to to the name of an inactive account? Perhaps the previous user is complaining.
Yeah, but it's not like he did something nefarious. He found an account that was inactive and requested it from support and they gave it to him. If the previous user complained, either he would get to keep it or the previous user would get it - it wouldn't be deleted/disabled and they probably would have communicated something.
Re: Ask HN: My GitHub account got suspended without any notice
#215Had a similar thing happen to me with Github a while back (pre-Microsoft acquisition). Even as a paying customer for many years, my account was disabled – without even receiving an email warning. I only discovered when browsing issue histories where I knew I'd left detailed comments, and noticing my comments gone without even a note about deletion, leaving threads nonsensically fragmented. When I tried to login, I wa…
For a paid account this is utterly unacceptable. For a free account I can kinda understand it, although it'd still be nice to get some automated explanation. An automated system that can't provide a good reason to disable an account, shouldn't be disabling accounts at all. If this is a thing that happens at Github, I guess that's another reason to check out Gitlab instead.
Age and activity matters here too. There are plenty of developers who have never paid github but do endlessly important work through it. At the very least flag these accounts for human review.
Re: Ask HN: My GitHub account got suspended without any notice
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
Par for the course these days. And its getting worse. When you have 40 million users and a few hundred people running the system, all kinds of issues just sit in queues never seen by human eyes until a gigantic stink about it is raised.
For those in the EU/UK, it's worth noting that the GDPR isn't just about controlling how personal data is used. It also imposes obligations on data processors to take care of that data properly. The usual issues arise about enforceability as long as this is only European law, and about ambiguity in the way the GDPR itself is written. However, it seems likely that arbitrary deletion of personal data like this could fa…
Because we're talking about an automated decision, Art. 22(1, 3) of the GDPR applies as well where:
> The data subject shall have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her.
And any exceptions still require the data controller to provide:
> suitable measures to safeguard the data subject’s rights and freedoms and legitimate interests, at least the right to obtain human intervention on the part of the controller, to express his or her point of view and to contest the decision.
Re: Ask HN: My GitHub account got suspended without any notice
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would hiring 100+ customer support reps be a problem for Microsoft?
1. They would need to be somewhat technical, so they would not be cheap. Let's say $70,000 a piece. 2. It is a free product. Would you spend 7 million a year supporting a free product? 3. 99% of complaints would be of the nature "GitHub is broken. HELP!" and really be some person who did not set the origin before pushing.
Mostly support is a person getting a hold of someone that can escalate. No technical requirements needed.
Re: Ask HN: My GitHub account got suspended without any notice
#218Had a similar thing happen to me with Github a while back (pre-Microsoft acquisition). Even as a paying customer for many years, my account was disabled – without even receiving an email warning. I only discovered when browsing issue histories where I knew I'd left detailed comments, and noticing my comments gone without even a note about deletion, leaving threads nonsensically fragmented. When I tried to login, I wa…
For a paid account this is utterly unacceptable. For a free account I can kinda understand it, although it'd still be nice to get some automated explanation. An automated system that can't provide a good reason to disable an account, shouldn't be disabling accounts at all. If this is a thing that happens at Github, I guess that's another reason to check out Gitlab instead.
And this sort of thing is why some of us have been endlessly warning that it's probably a bad idea to centralize all of the open-source ecosystem onto a single centralized, proprietary, commercial platform.
Not that those warnings were heeded, of course, as usual.
Re: Ask HN: My GitHub account got suspended without any notice
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cue the "it's not a monopoly" crowd. I think we need another word for these companies that are way to big and "monopolize" certain online spaces/communities.
I am in the "it's not a monopoly" crowd and yes we should definitely use other words to describe companies that do not have exclusive control over a commercial activity.
Exclusive control of an activity isn't needed to be a monopoly. In the 90s, people used Netscape on Macs, but Microsoft got declared a monopoly anyway.
Re: Ask HN: My GitHub account got suspended without any notice
#220Probably something to do with this? Mistaken identity maybe https://dev.to/lucis/how-i-got-the-github-username-of-my-dre...
Or even this one... https://dev.to/yg/how-i-got-two-letter-username-on-github-i1... Perhaps someone is trolling him as a result...
How times change - comment from OP:
https://dev.to/yg/comment/11cog
That's awesome! Agreed they have the best support team I ever have seen!