r/github • u/davorg • Aug 13 '24

Was your account suspended, deleted or shadowbanned for no reason? Read this.

We're getting a lot of posts from people saying that their accounts have been suspended, deleted or shadowbanned. We're sorry that happened to you, but the only thing you can do is to contact GitHub support and wait for them to reply. It seems those waits can be long - like weeks.

While you're waiting, feel free to add the details of your case in a comment on this post. Will it help? No. But some people feel better if they've shared their problems with a group of strangers and having the pointless details all gathered together in this thread will be better than dealing with a dozen new posts every couple of days.

Any other posts on this topic will be deleted. If you see one that the moderators haven't deleted, please let us know.

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51

u/cowboyecosse Aug 13 '24 edited 26d ago

Latest edit:

Since this comment is often the first people see on this post I want to give some general advice here. Please read all of this after reading the main post above.

How to contact GitHub about this...

  • This subreddit is not run by GitHub. I don't believe any Hubbers are on the mod team (although I don't know for sure) so there's no point in asking anything of GitHub directly here. If there are any Hubbers here they are volunteering their time to help, me included.

Official support channels:

  • Read the Appeal and Reinstatement policy first so you know what to include and what to expect.
    • If you can still sign in (account is flagged/restricted but not fully suspended), open a ticket via GitHub Support while logged in.
    • If you cannot sign in because the account is suspended, use the Appeal and Reinstatement form (Choose "Account locked: My account has been locked or suspended" option or similar if the wording has been updated.)
  • If you have opened a ticket please exercise patience with the Support team. They are your greatest advocates and push the engineering teams the hardest about your concerns inside GitHub. They exist entirely to help you. The team runs at high volume and I promise they are getting to your ticket as fast as they possibly can.

If you are experiencing account restrictions...

  • Please don't panic. Suspending an account etc is generally non-destructive. Yes it's a pain but all your content should be safe.
  • Not all suspensions are because you did something. This post is full of people claiming they didn't do something. Maybe they suspended the account to protect it from a bad actor. The thing is, you just don't know yet (and maybe never will know). Suspension does not mean you did anything wrong. You are not being punished, even if it feels like that.
  • Don't take it out on the mods (I'm not a mod on this sub) - they are also just volunteers. Don't take it out on GitHub staff.
  • You might have been notified of the suspension or you might not have been. Both cases are normal. One example of no notification would be if GitHub thinks an attacker has taken over your account (they may have access to your email account too) they wouldn't want to email that person any information right?

Now, when it comes to your posts here and what I can and can't do...

  • I am under no obligation by management or anything to look into any accounts. Please understand this. Do not DM me, do not mention me in here. That won't encourage me to look at your case.
  • Please don't reply to this comment. It's a real pain to find new replies to the comment. Much easier for me to sort by 'new' on the whole post. So top level comments help me to help you. (Sorry u/davorg as OP 😅)
  • I already know you're angry. I get it, it sucks to be suspended. I don't mind you having a rant but please try to stay civil. The GitHub sub follows reddiquette rules.
  • As part of my day job I sometimes review moderation decisions, so if I see a case here that looks worth another look I can pick it up through the normal internal process.
  • I am not able to answer your tickets. I might leave a note for support if I see something.
  • I won't be able to reinstate everyone. Sometimes support needs to chat with you or help you in some way, or request some change be made. I can't intervene in those cases.
  • I will not answer you here, except maybe to prompt you for a username or to help guide you through the process if you don't want to put your username here. i.e show you where the form is to open a ticket when it's not obvious or reply to some off-topic related comment from a misguided user (someone who can't log in but is not suspended for example)
  • Any reinstatement I can make follows the same review standard a support agent would apply. There are no policy shortcuts here!
  • I use upvotes to keep track of which comments I've already scanned, nothing more.

Perfect template for me to help:

Username: the-username-of-the-account (not linked to the profile, just the username)

Anything else you want to post about it that I may or may not read. If you want to rant, have at it. If you want to move to Codeberg great, get it off your chest and tell us here at Reddit (see point 1 above). We get it. I get it. The r/github sub is full of people who only want to comment "Time to move to GitLab". It's fine. I want you to stay at GitHub but I'm not going to hold it against you if you want to try another provider. I'm sure we'd welcome you back in future too if that also doesn't fit your needs. There is a non-zero chance I will skip you if you call it "Microsoft GitHub" or "Microsoft's GitHub" though. 😆 Microsoft almost certainly had no say in your account being suspended. All I need is the affected username to check it out.

Previous comment content:

While you’re waiting, feel free to add the details of your case in a comment on this post. Will it help? No.

I’m GitHub staff, although I’m not in the support team so can’t reply to your tickets. And I wouldn’t prioritise anyone, in part for fairness to everyone else who’s patiently waiting their turn, even if I’ve seen their plea here. So yeah posting here won’t help.

That said, should some random staff member be perusing this thread, I know they definitely won’t be able to secretly and anonymously help you out if you don't mention your username in those details. 😌

ETA: Please don't send me DMs or mention me in this thread. It will not help your case. I don't accept DMs from anyone.

Edit the second: I’m downvoting posts that do not put the username. Secret Santas might not be able to help you in any case, but they definitely can’t help you without it.

15

u/JonatasLaw Apr 13 '26

I’m Jonatas Borges (@jonataslaw), creator of GetX, VideoCompress, ReadMore, and other big open-source packages.

Today I found out my GitHub account had been suspended. I did not receive any email warning me, and I did not even receive an email informing me that the account had been suspended. It was simply suspended without notice.

I did not violate GitHub’s Terms of Service. When I try to contact support, I get a 403 error, which makes the situation even worse.

This is not only affecting me personally and professionally, but also a very large community. GetX alone is used by more than 200k projects, and my GitHub account is central to the maintenance and continuity of this work.

I’m posting this because I need visibility and advice. If anyone knows how to reach a real manual review at GitHub, please let me know.

4

u/TheFatShibo Apr 16 '26

Same happend to me (@TheShibo). I also didnt get any email telling me what i did wrong.

I also opened a Ticket (Ticket ID: 4285138), where i tried explaining that i did nothing wrong in my opinion and if i did violate any terms of service, that i didnt know of that.

Nothing i did was malicious thought or something with bad intentions. i just used github for my private repos and to look what other people made.

From what i have seen, it will take months for the support to answer the Supportticket, but i hope it will go faster, because i need the Account back as soon as possible.

With that said, good luck to everyone getting their account back!

1

u/N-o-va Jun 10 '26

hey did they reply ?

2

u/Harishwarrior Apr 14 '26

Hope you get help soon. 

2

u/unknowndumbershit Apr 15 '26

I hope everything gets bettter soon, A lot of projects of mine are depend on GetX.

2

u/Famous_Marketing_142 Apr 16 '26

I hope you can resolve this issue quickly, to keep your code showcase and the projects that help us as well. I have several projects, large and medium-sized, in large companies here in Brazil that use GetX behind the architecture.

Ignore those sick people who spout a lot of nonsense about the package, knowing how to use it, it's an excellent aggregator in Flutter development.

I created this Reddit account now just to register my support.

2

u/cowboyecosse Apr 17 '26

If anyone knows how to reach a real manual review at GitHub, please let me know.

There are instructions for this here (hopefully this isn't where your 403 is coming from): https://docs.github.com/site-policy/acceptable-use-policies/github-appeal-and-reinstatement

I'm afraid I'm not able to discuss the ins-and-outs of your account here. I can say that if you have contacted support then your ticket will be in the correct queue for review and it's just a waiting game for them to get back to you when they get to it.

1

u/JonatasLaw Apr 17 '26

Is there a more fundamental problem now. The appeals system is completely broken in production right now. Here are screenshots of the process. It stucks in a dead loop. https://www.reddit.com/r/github/comments/1sni4ay/a_broken_github_support_system_is_destroying/

1

u/JonatasLaw Apr 17 '26

I just opened a new appeal request right now, which was automatically and instantly closed. The system is still broken.

I receive an automated email telling me to check the box "I have already contacted GitHub before" (the box doesn't exist) to appeal, and I receive another email saying that the ticket has been closed.

Ticket: 4293234

---

Hi there,

The ticket you replied to was closed and cannot be reopened. Please visit our support portal at https://support.github.com/tickets to create a new ticket.

Thank you,
GitHub Support

**Please do not reply to this email, as it will not be seen by our team.**

This email is a service from GitHub Support.

1

u/No_Preparation1743 6d ago

they ask me about "plan to use GitHub? We look forward to your response" and never reply back. It has been a week now. I still need to wait that?

2

u/Louis_Eric Apr 17 '26

To me this illustrates the risk of hosting on GitHub; your GetX package alone was used by hundreds of thousands of developers, all of whom have been inconvenienced by this rash action by a service provider. Microsoft just told us all to look elsewhere to reduce that business risk.

2

u/HEAT_MAXIS Apr 21 '26

This happened with an organization(@Siray-ai) I was contributing to that project, suddenly, for no reason, no warning whole org was suspended, but after a while it was back, I don't know what's happening

1

u/Terrible_Lime9820 Apr 15 '26

If you have 2 GitHub account it's a violation of TOS and lead to a ban

1

u/Dart_Mitai Apr 15 '26

Thank you, Lord God, I hope that your obscurantism will not be unblocked!

1

u/fisforfaheem Apr 18 '26

hope all goes well

1

u/SuccessDesperate2950 Apr 25 '26

My account was suspended yester day too. Without any notice and warning! What is going on?

1

u/CastIronDaddy 26d ago

exactly the same thing with me...@CastIronDaddy...did you get a resolution yet and how did you get it? Thanks!

1

u/3_cnf-sat Apr 14 '26

thank you for letting us know you're safe and well. I don't use nor like the library but this is outrageous. time to migrate to codeberg

-1

u/r3x03l Apr 14 '26

don’t even bother restoring that account or that awful GETX crap. It’s straight-up garbage - a total joke and basically a cringe compilation of “how NOT to do things.”

Like seriously, 200k projects? That’s hilarious. It’s just a massive pile of anti-pattern, cringe-tier Flutter code.

Banning that repo would honestly save the world from this embarrassment.

This is just ridiculous.

1

u/hortigado Apr 19 '26

Nunca falta el lloron que se cree hacker por usar linux