https://github.com/PlagueHO/plagueho.github.io/pull/24#issue... Copilot has been adding "(emoji) (tip)" thing since May 2025. GitHub copilot was released in May 2025, so basically it has had an ad since beginning.
There are 1.5m of these things in GitHub. https://github.com/search?q=%22%3C%21--+START+COPILOT+CODING...
Here are some of them:
https://github.com/johannesPP/FS-Calculator/pull/2
> Connect Copilot coding agent with Jira, Azure Boards or Linear to delegate work to Copilot in one click without leaving your project management tool.
https://github.com/sharthomas645-tech/HybridAI-Next-React-Vi...
> Send tasks to Copilot coding agent from Slack and Teams to turn conversations into code. Copilot posts an update in your thread when it's finished.
Looks like MS really want to "give tips" about their new integrations.
edit: I think it's an ad too. Everyone would think so, except for MS.
I'm part of Raycast, we didn't know about it, learnt about it here
They have got away with it for a while because a lot of users have largely been stuck, but they are in real trouble now with Apple providing meaningful competition.
Or what Microsoft could do, run, install, etc on/from your computer while running their Copilot agents.
This is the same company that puts ads in your start menu and reinserts them with Windows updates even if you manually removed them.
("Reflections on Trusting Trust" Turing Award Lecture by Ken Thompson: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_Ref...)
You’re pointing to something entirely different: those are Copilot-created PRs. They can include anything Copilot wants to include. People using the Copilot PR feature know what they’re buying into.
OP is about Copilot doing post-hoc editing of a human-created PR to include an ad, allegedly without knowledge or approval of the creator (well I assume they did give their team member permission to update the PR body, but apparently not for this kind of crap).
Also I found this: https://github.com/Laravel-Backpack/medialibrary-uploaders/p... it seems like copilot added an ad on behalf of the user at Nov 2025(see last edit).
You'll never guess what happens next.
(Hint: everyone knows what happens next)
What I mean is that even if I take that at face value and accept that it's not an ad, and I can just about see from a certain level of corporate brainwashing how one could believe that, it's still completely unacceptable.
It's not like this is organic word of mouth we're dealing with here.
Otherwise, it would just be Github with displayed ads and that would hurt the brand, so everyone gets ads.
Including Windows, File Explorer, Start Menu, ...
It seems with the latest "ok we went too far" Win11 patch though, they got some tips back from their users.
No, they don't.
> edit: I think it's an ad too. Everyone would think so, except for MS.
You think a company with a $2.65 trillion market cap and an army of marketing professionals doesn't realize that what they're doing here is an ad, and didn't implement it intentionally as such?
That's not even remotely plausible. In the quantum multiverse which contains all physically realizable possibilities, that isn't one of them.
That's one reason I think they would argue it's not an ad. Another reasons are "recommendations" and "tips" and "suggestions" in my windows.
We've been including product tips in PRs created by Copilot coding agent. The goal was to help developers learn new ways to use the agent in their workflow. But hearing the feedback here, and on reflection, this was the wrong judgement call. We won't do something like this again.
A verifiable claim! I put it at 75% you totally will, but if any manifolders think I’m full of it it should converge to something less cynical
https://manifold.markets/HastingsGreer/will-microsoft-copilo...
I’ve deleted and moved my private repos off github and cancelled my copilot subscription specifically because of Martin Woodward’s previous response (“hope that helps”). Maybe you all want to talk to Microsoft PR/legal before posting?
Care to comment on Githubs planned violations of GDPR by enabling training on the contents of private repos?
If the PR is wholly authored by Copilot I get the spirit of this, although maybe not the best implementation. And "tips" like this that look like an ad for a product _definitely_ feel like an enshittification betrayal of the user, even if it was a genuine recommendation and not a paid advertisement.
In the OP's situation, where where Copilot was summoned to fix some thing within a human-authored PR, irrelevant modification of the PR description to insert unrelated content is specifically egregious. Copilot can easily include the tip in its own comment, so I'm curious why it was decided to edit the description of a PR instead.
Hell, I just saw an amazing open-source alternative to Raycast[0] and just replaced it the other day.
Solo founder here. My business is not VC-backed nor publicly traded, and I specifically avoided taking investment so that I can make all the decisions.
I avoid enshittification. This sometimes hurts revenue, but so be it. I wouldn't want to subject my users to anything I wouldn't like.
So, open-source is not the only hope. You can run a sustainable business without enshittification. The problem is money people. The moment money people (career managers, CFOs, etc) take over from product people, the business is on a downward path towards enshittification.
Even when I use proprietary software, I sleep easier at night knowing that open-source alternatives keep them honest in their approach and I have an out if things do change.
edit: oh, that and distributed authentication and distributed discovery
Stallman was always right, after all.
Unhealthy doesn't mean unusable but it sounded great until I checked that.
Every company or entity changes over time. Codeberg is great, but with more people using it for free, without donating, and worse, more people abusing the service with some bs AI generate code, malware, etc, more expensive will get to keep it running.. for now they have money, but as e.V in Germany, you survive either from members or from donations.. So use Codeberg, but most important, support it!
It will be there for as long as you (and everyone else) keep using it.
The large majority of the dystopian web, like Gmail, Facebook, etc. depend on that.
People who avoid e.g. Github, Gmail, Facebook, Xitter, etc. out of concern for broader principles will always be minor outliers.
Xitter is one of the best examples. Everyone knows it's compromised, owned by an dangerously antisocial person who's actively working at multiple levels to make the lives of everyone else on Earth worse, yet very few have stopped using it.
The saying "There's no ethical consumption under capitalism" is far too weak. It should me more like, there are no ethics under capitalism.
Sure; a platform is a platform is a platform. As for predictions, it is interesting to see whether self-hosting and smaller self-managed infrastructures will gain more traction again.
...for now.
> like JIRA
is not an industry standard. It's a widely used software by some folks. I used it in the past, not using now, for example.
> Maybe it's just an experiment at this moment.
Does Microsoft understand objection and negative feedback to experiments?
- No.
- Remind me in three days.By the way, most pre-industry-standard FOSS projects still have their own infrastructure. I do find it disappointing that Rust is on GitHub.
Anyway, the core value of Github has always been collaboration - this is where people were. If people go to other platforms, this core value dwindles. And switching platforms is not that difficult.
https://github.blog/changelog/2026-03-25-updates-to-our-priv...
New Section J — AI features, training, and your data: We’ve added a dedicated section that brings all AI-related terms together in one place. Unless you opt out, you grant GitHub and our affiliates a license to collect and use your inputs (e.g., prompts and code context) and outputs (e.g., suggestions) to develop, train, and improve AI models.
https://github.com/settings/copilot/features
-> Privacy -> "Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training"
1. Everyone doing this doesn't mean it's acceptable.
2. Google Gemini explicitly says right under the chat box if you are a paid subscriber (Workspace):
Your <company name> chats aren’t used to improve our models. Gemini is AI and can make mistakes.
https://privacy.claude.com/en/articles/10023555-how-do-you-u...
This is incorrect. If you are a paid subscriber, Gemini explicitly states it doesn't use your data to train its models.
I don't see how this is supposed to be legal.
So I think they’re injecting this as a tip on using Copilot, that just happens to be their integration with Raycast.
I have no idea what their actual partnership with Raycast looks like, maybe this is part of what they offered them? But it’s not a traditional link to another product ad like it appears to be from Raycast being a link.
GitHub's docs and blog make use of and feature Raycast, and I'm willing to bet that's the result of a partnership, and not because someone writing docs and blog posts happens to think Raycast is great and keeps bringing it up.
I think this is a ray cast issue, looking at these links. It appears on gitlab too, which is enough for me.
(That said I’m rather skeptical of this and would like to see more details of the process that produced this, and proof.)
Edit: Just noticed this official GitHub blog post from last month advertising Raycast, making this story a lot more believable: https://github.blog/changelog/2026-02-17-assign-issues-to-co...
Brought to you by Carl’s Jr.
I'm reminded of Jay Mohr's legendary take some years back on the creepy Carl's Jr. commercials:
I wonder if this is consistent with their terms of service. I mean, maybe they DO take all the responsibility for the code I generate and push in this manner?
Because it's nobody's IP, Microsoft is already in a position where they could just use, remix and/or distribute that output however they want to today.
"It looks like the user wants to add a database, I've gone ahead and implemented the database using today's sponsor: MongoDB"
(sure, I was working on something embedded, and asked for a recommendation, but it seemed quite intent that it wanted me to use that specific board)
If they genuinely implemented something like this, whatever they made from new customers via ads couldn't possibly make up for the loss of good faith with developers and businesses.
I suppose if it's real we'll see more reports soon, and maybe a mea culpa.
z Quickly spin up Hacker News comments from anywhere on your macOS or Windows machine with a lobotomy.
(Yes, this is malware. It’s incontrovertibly adware, and although some will argue that not all adware is malware, this behaviour easily meets the requirements to be deemed malicious.)
It is said, never point a gun at something you’re not willing to shoot. Apply something similar here.
Is that the most charitable way?
Commercial front-ends just hide the random seed parameters.
If you look at the positioning, someone has definitely justified that this is benign and a reasonable place to have an ad added in.
But it really seems like an own goal if true.
No, it is still an advert, and not useful in the least.
A simpler explanation was that it was a shameful advert injected into the end of people’s emails.
Not only unbothered, but genuinely appreciative of the notification.
That's a great feature. When I open a repo and I see most commits co-authored by Claude, I can quickly dismiss the entire project as slop.
Comment made using Mozilla Firefox.
Sent from iPhone - desirable cool rich person
Made using Mozilla Firefox - poor uncool nerd
If you don't want copilot garbage in your PRs, maybe don't use copilot to create or edit them?
So if someone says they use Copilot that could mean anything from they use Word, to they use Claude in VS Code.
Nah I still rate "Windows App" the Windows App that lets you remotely access Windows Apps. I hate it to death, its like a black hole that sucks all meaning from conversations about it.
The runway on free cash to fund the current bonanza is running out and crunch time is near.
Either of these options would still be bad, but here the author suggests that it's just copilot that now just injects ads in its output.
But I'm also paying the plan. Theres something odd about a tool which i paid for using my output to AD itself.
See you on neural links before “sponsored thoughts”.
^I find that turn of phrase to be particularly pleasing in this context.
My IDE doesn't pretend to be a cohauthor of my work, neither should an LLM.
More like, “Copilot edits ads into PRs.”
The title almost makes it sound like it could be a single fluke/one bad prompt but it’s really enshitification at massive scale.
https://github.com/search?q=%22%E2%9A%A1+Quickly+spin+up+cop...
--
Sent from my Android phone
--
Sent from my iPhone
Self-advertisement has been creeping up on us on a lot of places, I am unfortunately pessimistic on how this will turn out
Brought to you by Wendy's.
Sheesh.
Now is the time to move to Linux, and vibe code whatever niceties are keeping you on GitHub.
Does advertising work?
Just did!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raycast_(software)
Ray casting, however, is different:
time is money, save both. try ramp.
Or (not in this case) public relations , which is an interface with how the public views your product, service or company. In this case, copilot adding advertising into git pull requests is bad public relations for Microsoft, but the article author is referring to pull request as PR
I'll add: it doesnt really matter if this was the integration dumbly appending a message or the llm inserting the ad. Judging by the response to this submission, sneaky ad slop is now firmly inside the overton window, so for MS it doesn't make sense NOT to do it.
Presumably they used a free version of the LLM, therefore it is completely understandable that it inserted a snippet of text advertising its use into the output. I mean using a free email provider also adds a line of text to the end of every email advertising the service by default - "Sent from iPhone" etc.
If you do it manually, sure.
If you have an agent watching for code changes and automatically opening PRs for small fixes that don't need a human-in-the-loop except for approving the change, it's the opposite of lazy. It eliminately all those tedious 1 point stories and let's the team focus on higher value work that actually needs a person to think about it.
Given time all small changes will be done this way, and eventually there won't be a person reviewing them.
In fact I don't even use Ctrl + F anymore and instead just use Claude for all my searches
As much as AI uses a lot of energy, having something that fixes issues in the background is very likely to be a net saving if you consider the number of users who fail to complete a task due to the bug and have to either wait in a broken state or retry later.
It's probably using less energy than a person fixing the issue too. That's a guess though.
I currently have rules in all of my skill files forbidding models from advertising themselves or taking credit.
I’m so tired of all this BS. Why did this become normal? and how do we not read this as cheap advertising?
A little "made with X" in your own draft is one thing. Putting branding into a PR your coworkers have to read is another.
Edit: The link in the promotion goes to https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/how-tos/use-copilot-agent...
Which does show that this is affiliated with GitHub unlike what I thought. There are no mentions of this string in a code repository on GitHub (including the Raycast copilot extention).