this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2026
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Github Banned a Ton of Adult Game Developers and Won’t Explain Why (www.404media.co)
submitted 3 days ago by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] dan@upvote.au 84 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

I think sometimes people forget that one of the main features of Git is that it's decentralized. You don't need Github; just push your repo to a different remote.

Everyone that clones the repo (usually) has a full copy of it, including all history, and theoretically you can clone the repo directly from their copy. Of course, that's often not practical, which is how we ended up with these centralized services.

The main issue with losing a Github repo is the auxiliary non-Git-powered features of Github, like issue tracking.

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 34 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

This aspect of it being decentralized is so important to remember.

People sometimes give me quizzical responses when I point them to the repository for the Bypass Paywalls Clean plugin because it's hosted on a Russian git site (gitflic.ru). The plugin was chased off the Firefox add-ons site/Chrome add-ons site, it was chased off of Gitlab, it was chased off of Github, all over DMCA takedown requests. People act like "well it must be shady because it's not on a well known git site" and yet is hosted in a country that doesn't respect the US copyright cabals control over media literally because that's the only safe harbor for it. The developer even has this snippet on his description of the plugin:

PS although the add-on was removed from Mozilla’s add-on store (AMO) (because of DMCA Takedown Notice) it’s still signed and manually checked for security by Mozilla (hence the delay in signing).

Yet it's super common for people to be absolutely suspicious of it. Including being suspicious of the traffic leaving the plugin when it's not being used which turns out to be the plug-in checking for updates every time.

Using alternative gits is so important and is literally what allows programming and especially open source programming, to thrive.

[–] isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca 24 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Host your own forgejo

[–] E_coli42@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

Why not use codeberg.org?

[–] KickMeElmo@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Why forgejo over self-hosted gitlab?

[–] russjr08@piefed.zip 17 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Depending on what your needs and available resources are, GitLab is fairly heavy especially in comparison to Forgejo.

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 18 points 3 days ago

Forgejo is also infinitely easier to run. Its a static go binary that uses an sqlite database.

[–] KickMeElmo@sopuli.xyz 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Fair! Mind you, the question was genuine curiosity. I don't have projects of my own hosted at this time, but I may soon.

[–] russjr08@piefed.zip 1 points 3 days ago

No worries at all! I battled with that choice for a while when I was self hosting. I had already been so deep into using GitLab CI that it would've been a pain to migrate to Forgejo Actions, though to be fair when I had setup GitLab the Actions system didn't actually exist yet.

And if you plan to expose it to the Internet, GitLab being a much larger project has more potential security issues to keep up with which is another important note.

(Though as always when publicly exposing services to the Internet, keep up with patches either way and stay safe!)

[–] Linearity@piefed.zip 7 points 3 days ago

Because it’s going to implement federation soon
Nobody is going to sign up to your website just to post an issue on one repository. Federation is perfect for software forges.

[–] micka190@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

Maybe I'm just dumb, but I always thought half of GitLab's features were unavailable to self-hosted instances. It's why I just self-host Gitea and Woodpecker instead.

[–] TechnoCat@piefed.social 1 points 2 days ago

I would like to see a Git repo hosting solution that also stores issues and other meta data in either an ancillary git repo or a branch of the git repo as files.

[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 26 points 2 days ago

It's owned by Microsoft and they're doing this with all their products at this point.

[–] boundsoul@lemmy.world 45 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

and Won't Explain Why

They've made it pretty clear. They're banning porn because being a dumbass puritan is all the rage nowadays (and they probably want to avoid accidentally training their precious AI on porn). Seems like it's not well automated, though. Quite a few NSFW repos are still up. Probably requires manual user reports or some such.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 12 points 2 days ago

Leave the sinking ship if you don't want a bad experience.

[–] ImgurRefugee114@reddthat.com 33 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Sweet. I hope forgejo et al become more popular.

I strongly encourage Microsoft to keep making all their products worse while destroying user trust. It's a brilliant strategy that can make the world a better place.

[–] friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 11 points 3 days ago

Fuckin seriously. It's like they want people to leave.

[–] PierceTheBubble@lemmy.ml 17 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

So that's why Australia initially included GitHub, on the list of "social-media" platforms to be banned under 16?

[–] 6nk06@sh.itjust.works 26 points 3 days ago

Github is Microsoft, that's why.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 28 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

They said they thought they were within Github’s acceptable use guidelines; even though they make mods for hentai games and things like interactive vibrator plugins, they took care to not host anything explicit directly in their repositories.

A developer who goes by Sauceke, who Github suspended in mid-November without explanation, said their open-source adult toy mod users are now encountering broken links or simply can’t find any of their work.

Hmm. Buttplug.io's GitHub repositories are still up, and I'd think that that'd be rather-more-prominent if the issue is sex toy code.

[–] franzbroetchen@feddit.org 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

TIL there's a GitHub repository called buttplug-js

[–] tal@lemmy.today 16 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Web devs need hardware integration support too.

[–] baronvonj@lemmy.world 15 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Won't someone think of the chess Grand Masters?

[–] tal@lemmy.today 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

looks confused

searches

Ah.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/did-hans-neimann-cheat-at-chess-with-a-sex-toy-this-coder-is-attempting-to-find-out/

A cheating controversy rocking the chess world just won’t let up. One conspiracy theory promoted by Elon Musk without evidence is that young chess wiz Hans Niemannn defeated world chess champion Magnus Carlsen in early September with the aid of a vibrating set of anal beads.

It’s an intriguing idea, but is such a thing even possible? Ron Sijm, a software engineer in the Netherlands, wants to find out and has developed software to test the theory. He’s posted the code to open-source coding platform GitHub, and all he needs now is the right sex toy.

With the code built, Sijm started hunting for a butt plug or set of anal beads to test his theory. He’s turned to a community that knows the systems best, the butt plug sex toy control project Buttplug.io. Sijm has been talking with the folks on Buttplug.io Discord server in an effort to find someone who already has a device and is willing to test the software.

Sijm said coding out the basic software took about four hours and that, hypothetically, it would be easy for someone like Niemann or his team to put together. The list of compatible anal vibrating devices is long.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 2 points 3 days ago

He’s still not sure Niemannn cheated, though. “It is of course suspicious,” he said. “But it could be luck or it could be that Magnus had a bad day… maybe it’s not even possible to do this. That’s why I thought to make this program. Let people try. Maybe if people figure out it doesn’t even work at all, then this whole theory of butt plugs was just a waste of time.”

Hmm. Actually...you probably can actually determine it. Assuming that the device's radio is talking Bluetooth, which not all do, if anyone had a cell phone near the environment, and made use of Google's or Apple's Location Services, said companies probably have a log of it responding to beacons. Those location services work by broadcasting a beacon to Bluetooth and WiFi devices and uploading their MAC address and signal strength of the response to Google and Apple, who then compare it to prior position reports and IDs and strengths to determine a position, so there'll be a log of devices and their active periods floating around in their databases.

[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

huh, if there isn’t explicit content in the repos, the ban is nonsense. Makes me assume this will get resolved eventually.

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago

Everyone is fleeing GitHub anyway.

[–] artyom@piefed.social 10 points 3 days ago

That's what you get for hosting your shit on GitHub

[–] Forgottengoldfish@lemmy.world 9 points 3 days ago

My gut says that they are taking a shortcut to clean up copilot.

[–] Nioxic@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 3 days ago

Does the developers age matter?

/s

[–] m33@lemmy.zip 5 points 3 days ago

I'm a bit sad, now copilot won't learn dirty tricks, foul mouth code comments and all that to parrot for vibe coders living in VSCode

[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 3 points 3 days ago

The tighter they squeeze