GitHub is sinking

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Rate limiting, access, and UX issues

  • Multiple users report hitting “secondary rate limit” or commit-history blocks on first or light use, especially when not logged in; some interpret this as de facto default-deny for unauthenticated users.
  • Others note that logging in and/or using bot credentials in CI avoids many of these limits, reinforcing the sense of an emerging “authwall.”
  • Some describe severe friction creating accounts (email provider rejections, CAPTCHAs, instant TOS bans), pushing them to use search engines instead.
  • Occasional 404s and strange behavior (e.g., links working for some but not others) are mentioned.

Reliability, outages, and status data

  • Many report GitHub feeling much less reliable recently, especially in the last few months.
  • Linked uptime graphs are widely criticized as methodologically flawed and historically inaccurate; some suspect under-reporting of downtime in older data.
  • Others point out GitHub had outages long before recent AI trends.

Microsoft vs AI load as causes

  • One camp blames the Microsoft acquisition: migration to Azure, perceived brain drain, focus on AI products (Copilot), and poor operational discipline.
  • Another stresses AI-boosted activity: commits and Actions minutes allegedly up ~10x in a short time, with AI agents hammering the platform.
  • Some argue both are true: pre-existing issues now exacerbated by AI-driven traffic.
  • There’s disagreement on whether issues stem mainly from capacity/scale or misconfigurations/operational mistakes.

Centralization, economics, and “slop”

  • Centralized, SaaS code hosting is criticized as a single point of failure; self-hosting is portrayed as more robust, especially for companies.
  • Many worry AI-generated “slop” (massive low-quality code and docs) is inflating costs without proportional revenue, threatening free tiers.
  • Suggestions include stricter rate limits, quotas, or charging heavily for AI integrations and agents, especially on free plans.

Alternatives and self-hosting

  • Commonly mentioned: GitLab (enterprise-y, mixed UX reviews), Bitbucket, Gitea/Forgejo, Codeberg, Sourcehut, SourceForge, and OneDev.
  • Self-hosted forges (Forgejo, Gitea, onedev, GitLab CE) are praised for control and reliability, but lack the social/network effects and third-party integrations of GitHub.
  • Some note practical lock-in: cloud platforms and tools often integrate only with GitHub (or, sometimes, gitlab.com), forcing mirrors or bridges.

Views on GitHub’s remaining value

  • Defenders highlight generous free private repos, improved project-management features, Actions, and tight CI/AI integration, especially for small or AI-heavy open source projects.
  • Critics counter that these gains are outweighed by outages, AI intrusion, and perceived decline in engineering quality.