GitHub banned my account after my projects suddenly spiked on Reddit
I'm used to write (low-level) C and Win32 apps. Recently, I shared some of my open-source projects on Reddit. They got quite a bit of traction, resulting in a sudden spike of visitors and lot of unique Git clones in a few hours. This is one of my post, just to let you see what kind of code I'm used to write:
https://www.reddit.com/r/windowsapps/comments/1uw30gd/explorerbgtoolredux_a_refactoringrewrite_of_the/
Shortly after, I realized my entire GitHub account was shadowbanned: If I log I can see it, but anyone else (or logged-out sessions) got a 404 "User not found" error.
I contacted GitHub Support and after dealing with a virtual assistant (!), a human support agent (Pinto) finally replied with an ultimatum:
"At this time, we ask that you to remove the following repository or make it private: https://github.com/lpierge/Calimero" They granted me temporary access to do this.
BTW, they choosed that project in an absolutely arbitrary manner, just to name one with no valid reason. Calimero is a desktop manager which, besides some fancy things as flying icons, allow the user to download images directly from site like Picsum, Pexels, Reddit (every subreddit) and Danbooru. I suspect their automated abuse-detection system flagged it as potential malware/ransomware due to raw heuristics, and the support staff simply didn't bother to actually look at the source code.
I replied to support asking what specific terms of service the project is infringing. Their response? Complete silence so far, while my entire public presence on GitHub remains blocked unless I delete my own legitimate work.
This arbitrary "guilty until proven innocent" approach with zero technical explanation is incredibly frustrating.
Has anyone faced a similar compliance lockout on GitHub? How did you resolve it without deleting your open-source code? Any suggestion about what to do?
Thanks, Luca