GitHub just announced they’ll start using your Copilot data to train their AI models. Starting April 24, if you’re on Free, Pro, or Pro+, your prompts, code snippets, suggestions, even your navigation patterns are fair game. Unless you opt out.
Cue the internet: “Time to switch!” “Find alternatives!” “GitHub is dead!”
Relax.
No one’s switching from GitHub. You can opt out in your settings right now, takes 30 seconds. But more importantly, this outrage misses the actual story.
Notice who’s exempt? Business and Enterprise users. Their contracts protect them. Their data doesn’t get touched.
And that’s not a bug. That’s the business model.
Here’s what people don’t realize about big tech in 2026: almost every major tech company is an enterprise company now.
Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Meta, Google. Their revenue doesn’t come from you and me. It comes from the companies that pay six, seven, eight figure contracts and can’t afford to leave.
So when individual devs get mad on Twitter? It doesn’t move the needle. The enterprises that actually fund these platforms got their exemption written into the contract before the policy even dropped.
Think about it. Microsoft doesn’t care if 10,000 solo devs rage quit GitHub. They care that Goldman Sachs, Accenture, and 50,000 other orgs keep paying for Enterprise seats. Same logic everywhere. Google makes its real money from ads and GCP, not from you using Gmail. Nvidia sells to data centers, not gamers. Meta’s entire pivot to AI infra is enterprise-driven.
The consumer side of these companies is basically a funnel now. Get people in cheap (or free), collect data, improve the product, sell the real version to enterprises at scale.
And the one major exception to all of this? Apple.
Apple might genuinely be the last large tech company that still makes most of its money directly from consumers. You buy the iPhone. You pay for iCloud. You subscribe to Apple Music. The customer IS the revenue, not the product.
Which is wild when you think about it. The company people love to call “overpriced” might be the only one left where your money is actually the business model, not your data.
So yeah, go opt out of GitHub’s new policy. Takes a few clicks. But don’t pretend this is the beginning of the end.
The end already happened. You just didn’t notice because the enterprise contracts were signed quietly while everyone was arguing on Twitter.
What’s your take? Is there any big tech company left that genuinely puts consumers first, or is that era just done?

Knowledge by Execution - Breaking Down Tech for the Mango Man (Aam Aadmi/Regular Person) - https://www.sknexus.org/

SK NEXUS

GitHub announced it will use Copilot data (prompts, code snippets, suggestions, navigation patterns) from Free, Pro, and Pro+ users to train AI models starting April 24, with an opt-out available in settings. Business and Enterprise users are exempt due to contractual protections. The author uses this as a jumping-off point to argue that major tech companies have fundamentally shifted to enterprise-focused business models, where individual consumer outrage is largely irrelevant. Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, and Meta all derive primary revenue from enterprise contracts, making consumer data collection a funnel rather than the core business. Apple is cited as the lone exception still genuinely consumer-revenue-driven.

GitHub just announced they'll start using your Copilot data to train their AI