A week ago, GitHub merged the feed on its homepage with algorithmic recommendations, pissed off more than a few users of the Microsoft-owned code hosting giant. The register reports: On Tuesday, GitHub responded to the hostile feedback by saying that some of the behavior in question was actually due to bugs that have already been fixed, although it doubled down on its decision to combine the previously separate Follow and About You feeds. “Following” channel included “activity from people you follow and from repositories you watch.” This was the result of deliberate user choice: developers chose the code and contributors they were interested in.”For you” feed included “activity and recommendations based on your GitHub network.” This was the result of GitHub’s social algorithm and user behavior data.
As of last week, GitHub has combined the two to ease the burden on its servers, or so the company claims. “When we released the latest version of your feed on September 6, 2023, we made changes to the underlying feed technology to improve the overall performance of the platform,” the business explained in a post on Tuesday. “As a result, we have removed the ‘targeted events for repositories to which the user is subscribed’ functionality.” We don’t take these changes lightly, but as our community continues to grow exponentially, we must prioritize our availability, user experience, and performance.”
Bram Borggreave, founder of Columbia-based developer shop BeeSoft Labs, offered one of the more polite objections to the unwanted change of the feed among the almost two hundred people who commented, not to mention those participating in the adjacent discussion threads who requested cancellation […]. An engineer at the IT infrastructure management software developer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, told The Register in an email: “GitHub tried this before and their users said no. They are taking away a useful feature and replacing it with social media algorithm garbage. It’s like they forgot that people use their platform to do actual work, not just doom scrolling issues, pull requests, and new JavaScript frameworks.” “We understand that many of you are upset about the recent changes to your feed ” the company said. “We needed to do a better job communicating recent changes and how these decisions relate to our broader platform goals. Your continued feedback is invaluable as we evolve and continue to strive to deliver top-notch a developer experience that helps every developer be happier and more productive.”
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