this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
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[–] Quicky@piefed.social 120 points 4 weeks ago (7 children)

I'm torn between wanting to opt-out because it's morally correct, or remaining opted-in so I can poison AI models with my terrible code.

[–] bobo@lemmy.ml 44 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

so I can poison AI models with my terrible code.

Don't forget to teach it obscenities and yell at it whenever it fucks something up!

[–] Madrigal@lemmy.world 34 points 4 weeks ago (5 children)

Nah, guarantee the models have rules built in to deal with obvious stuff like that.

You need to be more subtle. Give them information that is slightly wrong.

[–] taco@anarchist.nexus 13 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Perhaps by generating a bunch of complex copilot code to upload. It's easy to mass produce and would look plausibly functional.

[–] Madrigal@lemmy.world 13 points 3 weeks ago

Training AI models on AI content is the fastest route to model collapse.

[–] Viceversa@lemmy.world 7 points 3 weeks ago

... and tell it things, that are slightly obscene

[–] ozymandias117@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago

Just need to use less obvious insults, a la, "your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries"

Still poisons the model with something an end user won't like, but isn't easy enough to train out

[–] Aerosol3215@piefed.ca 4 points 3 weeks ago

Artisanal crap code.

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[–] Cevilia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 27 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I signed up to github purely to opt in and upload terrible python code.

If they desperately want to train the idiot machine on my awful self-taught code, that's on them.

[–] Quicky@piefed.social 8 points 4 weeks ago

Chaotic good

[–] 4am@lemmy.zip 8 points 4 weeks ago

Name all your variables poorly and with swear words

[–] Flipper@feddit.org 8 points 3 weeks ago

Step one: Download a C or CPP repository.

Step two: Replace all semicolons with a greek comma.

Step three: ??

Step four: Poison Copilot, so that it randomly insert greek comas that the compilers totally choke on.

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 7 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] Quicky@piefed.social 20 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

No, you don't have to use it for it to take your code for training.

[–] 4am@lemmy.zip 18 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah all you have to do is commit anything to GitHub

They’re scraping all the code regardless of your preferences. I guarantee it.

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 14 points 4 weeks ago

All open source software is being scraped, on github or not!

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 6 points 4 weeks ago

Don't worry, the models already spit out poor code quality.

Por qué no los dos?

Opt out on one account, use another as poison. If you're gonna do this, I'd say move all your code to a new account and use the older account to poison - that way they can't filter the bad out by account age.

[–] vivalapivo@lemmy.today 66 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Opted Out and moved all to codeberg

[–] Captain_Faraday@programming.dev 26 points 4 weeks ago (3 children)
[–] vivalapivo@lemmy.today 31 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Has everything I need, but not more

[–] Susaga@sh.itjust.works 26 points 3 weeks ago

My god, this is such a positive review these days.

[–] TerHu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 4 weeks ago

i love codeberg, though i haven’t had a chance to test the collaboration features all that much

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 9 points 4 weeks ago

It's great. I also self-host my own Forgejo (that's the software Codeberg runs on) instance for private repos, to avoid using up space on Codeberg's servers.

Main problem is the lack of federation, leading to splintering across Codeberg/GitLab/sourcehut/self-hosted forges. I know there's Radicle, and Forgejo is working on ActivityPub integration, but it's slow-moving to get what should be inherently federated by design (git) to actually be federated. In practice you need accounts on a dozen different websites if you want to regularly contribute to foss.

[–] bruce965@lemmy.ml 60 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Link for opting out: https://github.com/settings/copilot/features

In the "Privacy" section, set "Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training" to "Disabled".

[–] Enzy@feddit.nu 19 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Illusion of choice. That setting will, totally unbeknownst to them, enable itself.

[–] tgxn@lemmy.tgxn.net 4 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

I turned it off ages ago, and if you already had it off, it's staying off. (for now at least)

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[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It seems to be off by default if you've already opted out of Copilot entirely. Definitely still a reminder I should set up my own git though

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[–] smeg@feddit.uk 41 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Not to be too snarky, but was there ever an assumption that stuff you put in wasn't being used to train it? Safe to assume that any online service you're using is making use of the data you're giving it.

[–] nogooduser@lemmy.world 13 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

If you’re a business with a contract with them it should state that they won’t use your data to train their models.

If you’re using the free service then you’re right that it’s safe to assume that your data was already being used.

[–] MNByChoice@midwest.social 8 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

business with a contract

I always wonder at this and have cautioned my managers repeatedly. Yes, we have a contract, but they have a literal army of lawyers and we have less (one lawyer one retainer for hourly work or a small grouping focused on taxes and employment law). As if our ownership won't bend over backwards to avoid suing a large company like Google, AWS, Microsoft, or Oracle. (Maybe OpenAI and Anthropic are sue-able by a $100 million corp?)

As proof I offer the lawsuits between businesses that have proceeded far enough the general public has heard about them. Not a specific one, just all of them.

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[–] entropiclyclaude@lemmy.wtf 25 points 3 weeks ago

As soon as Microslop got involved I pulled all my repos and left.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 23 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

fun fact, if you've ever accidentally clicked the "enable" button on copilot because you're a dumbass who can't read, you get a shitton of more settings, most of which are locked to "enabled".

[–] Madrigal@lemmy.world 32 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Even more fun fact, if you never clicked the "enable" button on Copilot, most of those settings are locked to "enabled" anyway.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 18 points 4 weeks ago

yeah you just can't see them. fun!

[–] UnrefinedChihuahua@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Yes I just found that this morning. Time to seriously look at the GitHub alternatives.

[–] UnrefinedChihuahua@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Also another setting under CoPilot>Coding Agent - turn off for All Repositories - mine was set to On.

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[–] Cevilia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

...and they want to train the idiot machine on this dumbass' terrible self-taught python code.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 4 points 3 weeks ago

i will not dispute the dumbass part but i have been programming professionally in python for 16 years. doesn't mean my code is any good, of course.

[–] Aeri@lemmy.world 21 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I mean if it wants some absolutely abysmal code then look no further.

[–] traxex@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 3 weeks ago

Hell yeah, I hope I contributed to some bot somewhere absolutely flailing to provide a good python snippet.

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

makes me want to fill my repos with absolute garbage code.

[–] Aeri@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago

Way ahead of you

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 9 points 4 weeks ago

If you're still om github, you're kinda doing for it.

[–] Captain_Faraday@programming.dev 8 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Got this email last night and felt validated for never uploading any code to GitHub because I don’t trust Microsoft. lol I don’t have any big coding projects, but I self-host a ForgeJo server in my mini rack at home behind a Twingate VPN.

[–] Hawke@lemmy.world 7 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

FYI: it is not “ForgeJo”

Forgejo is derived from Esperanto where the “ejo” suffix means “place”. The J is pronounced like y is in English.

It’s “forge-ejo” not “forge-joe”

[–] Quibblekrust@thelemmy.club 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

No, it's pronounced ForJayHo.

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[–] HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 7 points 3 weeks ago
  1. Migrate code and back it up
  2. Set up local AI
  3. Have local AI "patch" your github code by converting the entire program into brainfuck (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck?wprov=sfla1)
  4. Merge patched version to GitHub
  5. Profit
[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Microsoft:

Fully automating supply chain attacks since (at least) 2026.

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