GitHub forbade the auto-reply bot because of pro-Chinese government people complained about it

[cirosantilli]

Update: github clarified that their rule is "no-new comment on new issue/comment from action" and I'm satisfied with that. I wish they had been that clear from the start and all this could have been avoided! Thanks and all best.

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For many many years this repository used to have a auto-reply bot that automatically replied to comments with anti-CCP images e.g.: #1304 (comment)

This helped keep a balance in discourse because due to the chilling effect, only pro-CCP commentators would comment in this repository, while anti-government citizens have to stay quiet or else they will go to jail.

I created a support request for it at https://support.github.com/ticket/personal/0/2984378 and the final reply was:

We've received a large volume of complaints from other users indicating that the comments and issues are unrelated to the projects they were working on.

which means that GitHub gave into to complaints of followers of a brutal dictatorship, thus reducing freedom of speech.

Also this reply makes absolutely no sense, since the comments were done on my own repository, and therefore are on-topic here.

What I'm guessing is that the "actions support person" decided to take some action (no pun) on a large number of pro-dictatorship complaints without fully understanding the situation.

I understand that GitHub Support is under lots of pressure to handle many tickets. But freedom of speech is our greatest, and only advantage over dictatorships, and by taking actions such as these, our website mods are slowly degrading freedom under the pressure of those very dictatorships.

In the past, I've had nothing but respect for the amazing way in which GitHub dealt with compliance in different countries, allowing political speech in its platform and clearly maintaining a list of censored websites upon takedown request at: https://github.com/github/gov-takedowns But this event has tarnished that trust. I really hope GitHub can regain it.

If you'd like to help get the bot back

1. Open a support ticket requesting me to re-enable the bot: https://support.github.com/contact?source=subtitle&tags=rr-general-technical

Subject:

Allow cirosantilli/china-dictatorship to re-enable the comment action

How can we help:

At https://support.github.com/ticket/personal/0/2984378 GitHub was forbidden Ciro Santilli from running a bot that made anti-Chinese government comments on his own anti-Chinese government repository because many pro Chinese government supporters complained about it.

Please allow that action to be re-enabled and politics to be discussed freely on GitHub. We should not allow the anti-freedom demands of supporters of totalitarian regimes to reduce our own freedom.

Thank you.

Since what matters to GitHub support are ticket counts and not principles, we need to show GitHub that they will get more tickets if they don't reenable the bot than if they reenable it.

2. like these posts:

   • https://x.com/cirosantilli/status/1847391285495406947
   • https://mastodon.social/@cirosantilli/113330579182535172
   • https://www.reddit.com/r/github/comments/1g7acv6/github_forbade_me_from_running_a_bot_that_would/
   • https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/1g7aa6k/american_programming_website_github_forbade_me/

People I'm pinging in private messages:

• https://github.com/mlinksva Mike Linksvayer. VP, Developer Policy at GitHub. Found at: https://github.com/github/gov-takedowns
• https://github.com/pcihon Peter Cihon, Senior Policy Manager. Found at: https://github.com/github/developer-policy

---

My initial ticket was:

Hello!

If I visit https://github.com/cirosantilli/china-dictatorship/actions or any other actions page I see this message. Why is that?

Have I hit some resource limit? I checked https://github.com/settings/billing/summary but there doesn't seem to be much there.

One possibility is that I've recently left some debugging logs at

china-dictatorship/action.js

Line 50 in 2f0d305

console.log('payload: ' + require('util').inspect(payload))

maybe they were too large? I'll remove them now from master.

Just to give some more details, I've recently made some changes to that action script. Beside the logging, I'm also making a few more octokit queries. But nothing excessive I believe. It's like 4 extra fetches, and one or two extra issue creations. Visible at: ac09dd6...ac16719#diff-8220875c093b2e0babd94c1c553da7782c0f651ca251b922e89184baca42663b Thanks again.

Related:

• https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/23989
• https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/43929
• https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/34850
• https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/19015
• https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/129404
• https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/129404
• https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/112437
• https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/30238
• https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/138910

[cirosantilli]

I created a ticket https://support.github.com/ticket/personal/0/2984378 and GitHub finally replied after one month:

Hello,

Our apologies for the delay in getting back to you; we are currently dealing with higher than usual request volumes and are working to respond to priority issues such as yours as quickly as possible.

This account was restricted because you appear to have used GitHub Actions to take part in automated activity, including Actions that create Issues or Comments on our service. That type of activity is not allowed under our Terms of Service:

Terms of Service

To resolve this issue, we'll need you to agree to follow our Terms of Service going forward. We'll also need you to disable any automated Actions that do not comply with our Terms of Service and delete the repositories associated with these automations.

Please let us know when you've completed these steps and we'll be able to review the status of this account again.

Best regards,

Charlie

[cirosantilli]

I replied:

Thanks for the reply.

I will comply to whatever you ask me to do, but could you double check that these guidelines are accurate?

Can I never ever create any comments or issues from any actions on my own repositories? On other people's repositories, sure, but I'd never ever do that.

Or are there more specific cases where I can or cannot do this? E.g.:

create new comment on new comment or issue is OK, but create new issue is not

Because there seems to be many existing actions that do comment creation at least, related examples:

• https://github.com/actions/github-script?tab=readme-ov-file#comment-on-an-issue official guidelines for comment creation, most recently maintained by https://github.com/joshmgross
• https://github.com/marketplace/actions/create-an-issue
• https://github.com/marketplace/actions/create-or-update-comment
• https://github.com/marketplace/actions/create-github-issue

I only use these actions to help handle the large amount of spam that I get on that repository, and I'm only creating 1 comment or issue per incoming spam comment or issue, so it should not be using excessive resources.

Thank you.

[cirosantilli]

Hello Ciro,

Thank you for following up.

We've received a large volume of complaints from other users indicating that the comments and issues are unrelated to the projects they were working on. This is not the intended use of GitHub Actions and is, in fact, a violation of our Terms of Service and our GitHub Additional Product Terms for Actions.

Unless you remove the offending Actions and repositories and agree to refrain from making similar Actions in the future, we will be unable to remove the restrictions.

Best regards,
Charlie

[cirosantilli]

My reply:

I have now disabled the comment and issue creation at: 316a07b and I won't make similar ones unless GitHub speficially allows me. Can you please re-enable the action now?

However, I don't understand your point:

We've received a large volume of complaints from other users indicating that the comments and issues are unrelated to the projects they were working on.

The comments and issues are on my own repository, which is about the Chinese government.

I create comments and issues on my own repository, and those comments and issues are exactly about the Chinese government, and therefore on topic.

By forbidding this in my case, you are giving in to complaints of supporters of a brutal dictatorship, which creates a reputational risk for GitHub.

GitHub already has https://github.com/github/gov-takedowns/tree/master/China if the Chinese government wished to forbid my repository, which they chose not to.

If politics is allowed on GitHub, then you should not restrict activity on my repository specifically, no matter how many complaints there are.

[cirosantilli]

They replied:

Hello,

Thank you for following up once more.

Just to clarify, the issue is that the volume of comments created using Actions is in violation of our Terms of Service. This restriction is not related to the nature of the content of those issues specifically nor to your freedom to express your opinions. We respect the right of everyone to share their opinions and beliefs, as long as the content is not in violation of our GitHub Acceptable Use Policies.

We'd ask that, going forward, if you disagree with the content of user comments that you manually use one of the management tools available to you as outlined in Moderating comments and conversations.

We've removed the Actions restrictions from your account. Please note that future violations of the Terms for Additional Products and Features: Actions could result in the restrictions being enforced again and could lead to a suspension of your account.

Please don't hesitate to let us know if you have any other questions.

Best regards,
Charlie

[cirosantilli]

I replied:

Thanks for the reply.

So just to confirm, am allowed to make one manual reply to each comment by other people on my own repo, to show my points of view with links and images (sounds reasonable given that its my repo)?

Or am I obliged to only edit/hide/delete the comments of other people?

I would prefer not to edit/hide because I want their opinions to remain visible as well.

[cirosantilli]

Final reply:

Hello,

Your ability to reply to others has not been affected in any way and you may do so with as many replies as you feel are warranted. Our ask is that if you do decide to respond to comments from others, that it not be via Actions, specifically.

Once again, please don't hesitate to let us know if you have any other questions.

Best regards,
Charlie

[cirosantilli]

OK, so it reached a logical conclusion then, new comment on new issue/comment is forbidden in general. I with they had told me just that at the start!

Thanks GitHub for letting me keep my repo.