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I just got this message bar on GitHub saying that:

Your account has been flagged.
Because of that, your profile is hidden from the public. If you believe this is a mistake, contact support to have your account status reviewed.

I have absolutely no idea why this has happened - I have a GPU decompression library there, some CUDA API wrapper classes, a thesis template, and my professional mini-website which has also been pulled offline.

I have contacted their support, but I'm worried about this happening all of a sudden.

My questions:

  • What makes an account on GitHub be "flagged"?
  • Is it possible, or perhaps has it occurred before, for a GitHub account to be flagged due to a malicious action?
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  • 2
    GitHub's behavior in this regard is completely egregious. I made a new account for the purpose of being able to make some innocuous gists. My new account was flagged before I had even shared the first gist with anyone! And there was nothing spammish or controversial at all in the gist. My only recourse is to file a complaint, which they say has a TWO WEEK turn-around time. Trust, once broken, is hard to re-earn and now I feel as if I just can't trust GitHub anymore. I rely too much on GitHub at the moment to be able to take the risk of having my account uncerimously deactivated for weeks.
    – Douglas
    Apr 18, 2021 at 17:29
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    @Douglas: I, for one, welcome our new Microsoft Overlords! ... anyway, note my question is from 4 years ago.
    – einpoklum
    Apr 18, 2021 at 19:29
  • I guess GitHub has been evil for a long time! When I pushed GitHub at my company, that was like nine years ago. Perhaps before it became evil?
    – Douglas
    Apr 20, 2021 at 21:49

4 Answers 4

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Your Github Account can be flagged if they believe you are violating their conduct restrictions.

While using GitHub, you agree that you will not under any circumstances:

  • harass, abuse, threaten, or incite violence towards any individual or group, including GitHub employees, officers, and agents, or other GitHub Users;

  • use our servers for any form of excessive automated bulk activity (for example, spamming), or relay any other form of unsolicited advertising or solicitation through our servers, such as get-rich-quick schemes;

  • attempt to disrupt or tamper with GitHub's servers in ways that could harm our Website or Service, to place undue burden on GitHub's servers through automated means, or to access GitHub's Service in ways that exceed your authorization (other than those authorized by the GitHub Bug Bounty program);

  • impersonate any person or entity, including any of our employees or representatives, including through false association with GitHub, or by fraudulently misrepresenting your identity or site's purpose; or

  • violate the privacy of any third party, such as by posting another person's personal information without consent.

Information Derived from Github's Terms of Service.

In your particular case it was probably just their spam-bot catching you as a false positive user. These mistakes happen from time to time and can be resolved by writing them an email at [email protected] or [email protected]. They will usually reply and un-flag your account within a few business days.

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One of the reasons for flagging is automated spam account/activity detection, and that can have false positives.

Quoting GitHub support's response to my inquiry:

Sorry about that!

Our spam-hunting bots usually do a good job, but from time to time they get things wrong. Today was one of those times, and I’m sorry you were on the receiving end of their mistake. While we aren't let into too many of the workings of their silicon brains, we are able to teach them the error of their ways.

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here two examples how your account gets flagged:

GitHub censored very fast macronleaks.github.io, which only showed a txt file with Magnet links. GitHub is not a platform for leaks.

curl -I https://macronleaks.github.io
HTTP/1.0 200 Connection established

HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Server: GitHub.com
(...)

and GitHub Takes Down Satirical 'C Plus Equality' Language

Some clowns and jokers over at 4chan thought it would be a funny idea to put together a web page for a programming language named 'C Plus Equality' as a parody of feminism, dismissing OOP as 'objectifying' and inheritance as "a tool of the patriarchy". But this parody was apparently too hot to host at Github, which took down the original Github repository after receiving criticism on Twitter, prompting a backlash and inquiry into the role of free speech and censorship on Github's platform. The project has since found a new home on BitBucket, at least for the time being." Comments on an article describing the research which sparked the parody call the parody's language "fake," and compare it to the 1996 Sokal affair. (It also reminds me a bit of Jesux.)

GitHub is not a platform for humour.

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    Github is no longer a platform for me then. I just had my account flagged I think because I set up an SSH key incorrectly so they think I am a hacker. I have been a customer for years
    – OneChillDude
    Sep 22, 2017 at 5:17
  • Yeah, their censorship is quite intense these days. *sigh*
    – Simon East
    Oct 29, 2021 at 10:11
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In my case it might have happened due to sudden larger activity (i18n work). Anyway, such annoying automated shutdown/restriction activity to me seems like in pretty much no way acceptable - behaviour maybe should be something like this (issue detected, then automatic analysis etc....):

  • minor issue →nothing

  • questionable issue → INTERNAL (for-review-only!) flagging ONLY, then possibly active flagging AFTER staff review

  • larger issue → automated (unattended) flagging

In case of actual flagging, this then obviously necessitates active resolution via account user.

Living with the risk of having productive accounts rendered damaged according to questionable conditions at any moment in time isn't a particularly convincing state of affairs...

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