GitHub can't be trusted: suspending Russian accounts deleted history and PRs

While pretty shitty for the people affected, I think this [and the many similar virtue-signaling stunts we've seen by big US global internet corporations] is good for the internet, in the long run.

Far too few companies monopolising far too much of our online life at the moment. Hopefully, now, more people will realise that they shouldn't trust their time, their data and, in some instances their careers, to to the capricious whims of a few big US corporations. And we'll see more growth in decentralised alternatives.

As an aside; I find it a bit sad to see how many HN-ers are tacitly supporting these blanket bans on all Russians, issued by various websites.

I wonder if you'd still think it OK if such sites announced they were banning all Jews, Moslems or blacks, due to the actions of some government of that extraction?

They did that with Iranian developers before. I think anyone who is a citizen of a country on the wrong side of US foreign policy is at risk. This is an increasing number of countries, and Indians could be next.

"Can't be trusted"... what was it you thought this free service Microsoft paid $8bn for should be "trusted" with?

You can trust your selfhosted infrastructure as far as it goes. But even then if the country you live in has laws that put you personally in a bad situation for providing services to some class of people - Iranians already went through all this - you too will take it down.

Microsoft is pretty big on compliance. Just look at their customers and you know why.

Github isn't really a good place to host open source in my opinion. Microsoft basically bought the momentum which will maybe remain for years. But you should look for alternatives.

Hmm, that seems like a really bad oversight on GitHub's part. How did no one think about this before taking such drastic action? I think it was a mistake, and a pretty major one at that.

Embrace, extend, extinguish