Alt text: an ad for Github Copilot when viewing files in a github repo
this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2024
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Privacy
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Enshitification doesn't really apply to GitHub because you aren't really locked into GitHub. At least you aren't so long as you consider the git part of it to be more important than the social media platform part of it. Repositories are totally interoperable with other services so the cost to jump platform is fairly low. At least so long as you aren't relying on curling stuff directly from GitHub, which everyone knows is a terrible idea and very bad practice yet happens all the time anyway.
The template and framework of this idea requires social media platforms be finger traps, with way higher costs to leave than enter.
Doctrow himself is pretty clear about this. Interoperability is the way you fight back against enshitification.
Github is pretty much a social network for coders these days. If it was so easy to switch away or just not use their service, why is it that the vast majority of projects are hosted there? Git alone can't be the reason, as you rightly say it isn't any different from other git hosts. The relevant parts are the collaboration features and those are exactly the type of social media that enshittification applies to.
funny that's not what I just read in his FT piece "There are four constraints that prevent enshittification: competition, regulation, self-help and labour. To reverse enshittification and guard against its re-emergence, we must restore and strengthen each of these." published just yesterday.
Also FWIW we absolutely are locked into GitHub... because others are too. That's why M$ bought it in the first place, classic strategy from Redmond. I go use Gitlab, have my own Gitea instance, but in practice where do people talk on issues? Github. That's why even entities like Mozilla or KDE that have entire CI and bug system outside of Github still often have mirrors there. Because that's sadly where most of us end up being locked.