Drop grade for Github

[retropele]

I am sorry I don't have the technical knowhow to request a push on this myself, I'm just not savvy enough.

Why is Github rated as B? This entailing "The terms of service are fair towards the user but they could be improved", I don't think this is reflective at all of Github's policies.

• Github obeys copyright takedowns by large corporate entities, even when such information should arguably be free.
• Github admit its coding AI's output "may be copied verbatim [from public sources]", including public Github repositories. With many users no longer using their accounts, this can't be considered ethical. No doubt many never consented to being part of this AI repository or knew that this was something that can be done with their work.
• Github is owned by Microsoft, who have huge issues of their own, and this throws further uncertainty onto their trustworthiness. They also don't advertise this openly.
• They comply with censorship requests, specifically toward US interests.
• Github has a hefty contract with the USA's ICE division, making them inextricably tied to the United States government.

Can Github be dropped to a much lower grade? If a low grade is awarded it ideally would be displayed upfront.

[shadowwwind]

The grade is based on the actual ToS, the fact that GitHub is owned by someone or has outside deals does not affect the rating.

The grade is probably out of date and hasn't been updated. I would assume their grade wouldn't go below a C regardless tho.

Censorship may affect the rating, if you can provide a source (prominent news coverage) we can add that as a bad point. You can also create points yourself on https://edit.tosdr.org

[retropele]

The grade is based on the actual ToS, the fact that GitHub is owned by someone or has outside deals does not affect the rating.

The grade is probably out of date and hasn't been updated. I would assume their grade wouldn't go below a C regardless tho.

Censorship may affect the rating, if you can provide a source (prominent news coverage) we can add that as a bad point. You can also create points yourself on https://edit.tosdr.org

Thank you very much for the information on this, I really appreciate the labour and can see your perspective.

Github Copilot's censorship issues are here:
https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/02/github_copilot_banned_words_cracked/
Banned terms include Israel, Palestine, communist, liberal, socialist, Nazi, black people (but not white people) etc.

Github has censored Wikileaks content multiple times. It's notable that these repositories were not breaking laws (with this content available publicly on LinkedIn) but Github appears to have complied without a formal request for takedown, and expediently, because this content is considered sensitive to the US government.

https://www.newsweek.com/icepatrol-wikileaks-publishes-database-ice-employees-despite-attempts-censor-990261

"WikiLeaks has published a searchable database of personal LinkedIn data of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employees, under the banner "ICEPatrol."
The archive is split into categories including location, job position, school attended and company, with some employees also being listed as working for other government branches including the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
[...]
The LinkedIn data was removed from websites GitHub, Medium and Twitter this week after being scraped by programmer Sam Lavigne, leading to accusations of doxxing [...] USA Today reported WikiLeaks as saying the data had been "censored" online, however that tweet appears to have been deleted."

See this less reputable source also: https://www.networkworld.com/article/954548/why-are-github-and-wordpresscom-censoring-content.html

[ptgms]

The points you are making are valid. We can take them over to the forum to discuss there with our community and contributors. This is the wrong place for this - this repo is meant for issues regarding our contribution tool Phoenix, not for grading and rating issues. For this, please go to tosdr.community or email us at team(at)tosdr.org. I will create a thread on tosdr.community later about this topic.