Post #4123345

2026-07-26 23:36 UTC

I don't get why people are upset that their Github projects are getting pulled into the Hugging Face training set. For goodness sake people ... github IS a training set. I don't mean your project is surreptitiously scraped -- although that's happening too. When you publish on Github you are loading content directly into the Copilot training machine. If you don't want to be trained upon, maybe you shouldn't publish on Github.

Replies (2)

@philip@mastodon.mallegolhansen.com 2026-07-26 23:45

@courtney@pdx.social I think you are *correct* in the conclusion that hosting stuff on GitHub *is* putting it in a training set. But it also feels a bit… tone deaf? To suggest people can’t be upset by that. When I put my project in GitHub a decade ago, that was very much *not* the expectation that was being set. I’m sure you know that. The deal changed since then yes, and *not* moving is a choice, so you could say I’m at fault. But the powers that be also understand that friction, and are abusing it.

Open ##4123344
@iris@neuromatch.social 2026-07-27 00:36

@courtney@pdx.social surprised and upset are not the same thing. I have work on github mainly as part of other research groups (not under my control where they put it) but also some side projects, and even if I only put new work in my own repos elsewhere, a lot of my contributions will be on github for the foreseeable future. Coming at it from a different angle, it doesn't sit right with me to shame people for getting upset about their consent being violated, regardless of whether they should know better. Practically speaking, unless my understanding of psychology is wrong, the most likely responses to this are either to dig your heels in (what I'm doing here) or to stop complaining about it and just let it happen (I am guessing you also aren't thrilled with this outcome). Don't punish the behavior you want to see, you know?

Open ##4222381