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If you don't opt out by Apr 24 GitHub will train on your private repos

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: If you don't opt out by Apr 24 GitHub will train on your private repos

#271

Post by computomatic »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #263

There’s a lot of furor in this thread, but people felt the same way when Google Street View came out. Eventually they worked through most of the thorny bits and people use Street View now. I suspect MSFT is in a similar spot. If they don’t train on more data, they’ll be left behind by Anthropic/OAI. If they do, they’ll annoy a few diehards for a while, they’ll work through the kinks, then everyone will get used to it…

That comparison doesn’t hold at all. This would be equivalent to Google publishing photos of inside your home.

Or, perhaps more directly, training their image-gen models on your private Google Photos.

Re: If you don't opt out by Apr 24 GitHub will train on your private repos

#274

Post by Esophagus4 »

computomatic wrote: post #271
Esophagus4 wrote: post #263

There’s a lot of furor in this thread, but people felt the same way when Google Street View came out. Eventually they worked through most of the thorny bits and people use Street View now. I suspect MSFT is in a similar spot. If they don’t train on more data, they’ll be left behind by Anthropic/OAI. If they do, they’ll annoy a few diehards for a while, they’ll work through the kinks, then everyone will get used to it…

That comparison doesn’t hold at all. This would be equivalent to Google publishing photos of inside your home. Or, perhaps more directly, training their image-gen models on your private Google Photos.

Conceptually I think it’s a fine comparison.

They’re training (with an opt out) on stuff people feel is an invasion of their privacy to make their service better.

Re: If you don't opt out by Apr 24 GitHub will train on your private repos

#275

Post by layer8 »

fph wrote: post #268
layer8 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every Git commit is likely to contain personal data, in the form of the author’s name and email address usually present in a commit’s metadata. Furthermore, unless GitHub is prohibiting users from submitting personal data via their ToS (which, given the above, would be impractical), 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 pr…

By that logic, you can't use any user input to train an LLM, because what if they decide to write their own name.

Indeed, you can’t unless you have appropriate consent. Which isn’t difficult to obtain if you have clearly defined purposes, but you have to do it.

Re: If you don't opt out by Apr 24 GitHub will train on your private repos

#276

Post by fph »

nottorp wrote: post #114
hedayet wrote: post #25

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

How does that help if you don't go to the github site but just use git from the command line?

Can you use git's Copilot from the command line? If you can't, then you have nothing to opt out from.

Re: If you don't opt out by Apr 24 GitHub will train on your private repos

#277

Post by tryauuum »

itsdesmond wrote: post #270
jamiek88 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About technology. About communication with other humans he’s pretty much always wrong. Imagine we’d had a better communicator who wasn’t a gross toe nail picking troll fronting free software? It shouldn’t matter. Only the ideas should matter . But the reality is different.

He argued against EU proposals for ISPs to filter CSAM on the basis of protecting free expression. Not always right about technology, either.

Mass scale internet censorship in Russia also started with the premise of "protecting the children"

When you put in law that ISPs should adhere to some government-provided blocklist, this is already a game over. No matter how sane your government is. The government in 10 years might be vastly different, and the ability to control the ISPs is too alluring to not abuse

I'd rather live in a world where you could find words like "kill all russians", or child porn, or blatant propaganda than to live with the government censorship. I lived in Russia and the experience was nightmare. Who knows, maybe if the government didn't have the tools they had then the independent media would still be reachable by an average russian, the pictures of the pointless massacre would be public and the war would be over in a week

Re: If you don't opt out by Apr 24 GitHub will train on your private repos

#278

Post by _pdp_ »

akerl_ wrote: post #264
_pdp_ wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Again, this collects usage data. If you click the button by accident and don’t interact, they get no data.

So? This feature is available to everyone and you have zero idea how many people actually use it.

If I go to one of your GPL projects and I ask a simple question to find out what this project is about, you will be perfectly "ok" that this interaction (that includes most of the code that is required to answer my dumb the question) will be used for training?

This is not ok.

Re: If you don't opt out by Apr 24 GitHub will train on your private repos

#279

Post by roegerle »

jmward01 wrote: post #226
dotancohen wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$ git pull $ vim foo.rs $ git commit $ git push That's how.

exactly this. I rarely need to go to the site.

Obviously you wouldn’t see it if you don’t go to the site so why ask?

Re: If you don't opt out by Apr 24 GitHub will train on your private repos

#280

Post by justinclift »

booi wrote: post #227
layer8 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the EU, opt-out is not a legally valid way to obtain the necessary consent. How do you plan to handle this?

probably by paying the fine and doing it anyway

s/fine/lawyers/
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