r/github

Before anything else: this is not an account recovery request.

This is about what happens when a support flow stops leading to a human being — or breaks due to a UI inconsistency that made it into production.

Right now, accounts can be flagged by automated systems or false reports and pushed into a dead loop. That is a serious failure mode, and there is currently no clear way out of it.

When an account gets flagged, it can effectively disappear — along with all of its repositories.

And what if you have maintained that repository for over 9 years, it is used by more than 230,000 projects, and it has thousands of stars? Apparently none of that matters. It still gets handled entirely by automation.

You do not get a proper explanation. You do not get a clear reason. Your account just disappears — no prior notice, no warning, no follow-up.

Then you open a ticket, and you automatically receive a response telling you that, if you do not want to see that message again, you should check a box confirming you have already contacted GitHub about this issue.

So you open another ticket — but there is no field where you can answer “yes” to that question.

So what do you do? You fill out the form, include the previous ticket number to show that you already contacted GitHub — and what happens?

You receive the exact same automated response again, telling you to check a box that does not exist.

That is not an appeal process. It is a dead loop.

The most disturbing part is not that systems can make mistakes. Any system can fail.

The disturbing part is that human review — the absolute minimum in a case like this — is no longer reachable.

And that is where this stops being about one account and starts becoming a trust problem.

Because trust in a platform starts to collapse when:

- automation can flag you

- automation can close your appeal

- and the official instructions send you to a step that no longer exists

At that point, this is no longer just a bad suspension.

It is a production failure in a system people rely on for work, reputation, open source, and income.

And if this can happen to someone maintaining code used by 230K+ projects, it can happen to anyone.

Including you.

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Note:

I’m not asking for a review of my case. I’m not asking for privileges or priority.

I’m asking for something much more basic: a support process that is real, consistent, and reachable.

Because right now, this is not just about one account, one project, or one developer.

It’s about what happens when a system people depend on for work and income fails in a way they cannot recover from.

My income depends entirely on open source. Today, I genuinely don’t know how I’m going to pay rent next month or even cover basic expenses in the coming weeks.

But this is not about sympathy.

This is about a production system that, in its current state, can silently remove someone’s work, reputation, and livelihood — without a functioning path to resolution.

And that should not be possible.

i've been using github for years and something that always bugged me is how slow the UI feels. not the API – the actual web interface. clicking between files, navigating issues, switching branches... every action has a noticeable delay.

so i dug into it a bit. the main bottleneck is that github server-renders basically everything. every click is a full roundtrip to their servers, a re-render, and a full page load back to your browser. for a tool that developers use 8+ hours a day, that friction really adds up.

i started thinking about what github's UI would feel like if it was client-side:

• caching – if you've already loaded a repo or issue list, going back should be instant. no reason to re-fetch from the server every time.

• optimistic updates – when you star a repo or react to an issue, the UI should update immediately instead of waiting for the server to confirm.

• prefetching – if you're about to click something, start loading it on hover. by the time you click, it's already there.

• no full page reloads – client-side routing means transitions are instant.

i actually ended up building this as a side project – it's a client-side github UI that uses the API directly. the difference in speed is pretty wild once you have local caching + optimistic updates working together.

not trying to sell anything – it's open source and free. mostly just curious:

1. does the slowness bother you too, or am i the only one?

2. are there specific parts of github's UI that feel the slowest to you?

3. have you tried any other approaches to make github faster? (cli, extensions, etc.)

4. Do you feel the current github experience is slowing down your workflow?