Change is always difficult – big and small – especially when it's forced upon you by a giant corporation. That's what some developers on GitHub are finding out, at least, after the company introduced a personalised For You feed.
As spotted by The Register, the For You algorithm-based feed hasn't gone down particularly well. The top-voted post from the past few days, with 211 upvotes, simply states: “I don't want algorithmic feed” before listing some reasons.
The sentiment is echoed elsewhere. All but the third most upvoted post criticised the new For You feed.
All change
“I don't think Github needs facebook/instagram like features,” wrote one user. “I personally don't care about what people like/fork, and i don't want people to know what i do either, i just need a better search and better tagging system so i can search for libraries/projects based on MY SEARCH and MY INTERESTS, not based on a biased one developed with AI. what's next? stories?”
“Please don't turn GitHub into Facebook,” writes another. “Please give me an option to completely disable the algorithmic feed and only have the relevant, chronological feed, only from users I follow and repos I participate in.”
It's not all bad, though. A post with 64 upvotes praises the For You feed, writing, “I Love the new idea of for you, good luck.”
Analysis: Give it some time?
Over time, people often become accustomed to change.
Back in 2006, Facebook introduced News Feed to its users, opening them up to increased sharing of their activities. Users revolted against the change, leading to a direct apology from Mark Zuckerberg.
People came to accept it and the rest, as they say, is history.
The same will likely be the case for GitHub: the resource is so useful that most developers have few other options and changes like this, even with large pushback from its user base, are probably here to stay.
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