I was updating the README.md for one of my organisations yesterday, Friday, 15th May 2026, when I suddenly got logged out, tried logging back in a couple of times, and kept getting redirected to the login page.
Then I decided to start again from a fresh new tab, and then got redirected to github.com/suspended with the page stating that I had violated some GitHub terms and conditions.
No email. No warning. No explanation. Just a banner that says my account has been suspended and a link to contact support, a link that redirects me to the login page, which redirects me right back to the suspension banner. Just the perfect go fuck yourself loop with no exit.
I'm Legacy, a software engineer and tech entrepreneur based in Nigeria. I'm the founder of Toneflix Technologies and lead developer at Greysoft Technologies. Over the past few years, I've been quietly building a suite of open-source packages, frameworks, and tools that other developers depend on. Today, all of that is frozen.
What Got Locked
Here's a non-exhaustive list of what I can no longer access to maintain:
Toneflix / Greysoft Packages
A collection of JavaScript, TypeScript, and PHP utilities published and maintained under the Toneflix GitHub org. These include component libraries, Laravel packages, and utility tools actively used in production apps.
Arkstack
Arkstack is a framework-agnostic, full-stack, runtime-agnostic Node.js framework I've been building, think Laravel. It has a package ecosystem of its own and currently powers the backend of a fintech product currently in active development.
H3ravel
H3ravel is an elegant Laravel-inspired framework built on top of H3 that also has its own growing package ecosystem. Some of these packages are dependencies of Arkstack itself.
A total of over 100 open source projects and packages that are now no longer accessible. Pull requests are frozen. Issues can't be responded to. CI/CD pipelines that relied on my account are broken. Users who depend on these packages can't get updates. And I can't do anything about it because I can't get in touch with a human at GitHub.
The Support Loop Problem
The cruellest part of this isn't the suspension itself, it's the way the system is designed to keep you out of the appeals process.
When your account is suspended, GitHub directs you to support.github.com. To file a ticket there, you have to be logged in. When you log in, GitHub detects the suspension and redirects you back to the suspension page, which tells you to go to support. Which requires you to log in.
That's it. That's the loop. There is no break in it by design. Just perfect fuckery
The workarounds I've found so far:
- Email
support@github.comdirectly from the email associated with my account. - Sent DMs and mentioned
@gitHubon X/Twitter. - Sent an email to
abuse@github.com.
I've done all three. Now I'm waiting.
This Is a Bigger Problem Than Just Me
I went looking to see if others had experienced this and, hopefully, to get hints on how they resolved theirs, and found a deeply uncomfortable pattern. Developers suspended without notice, without explanation, often without even an email:
- GSoC contributors locked out mid-program
- Students blocked from university coursework
- Open source maintainers unable to respond to their communities
- Appeals going unanswered for months
One developer filed a ticket in November 2025 and as of March 2026 — four months later — had received zero response. Not a denial. Not a request for more information. Nothing.
The common thread across all these cases: automated systems acting without human oversight, and no meaningful way to appeal.
For free-tier users in particular, there appears to be effectively no escalation path. You are at the mercy of whatever algorithm flagged you and whatever queue your ticket lands in.
Why This Matters for Open Source Infrastructure
GitHub has become the de facto home of open source software. That's not inherently a problem, but it creates a structural risk that doesn't get talked about enough: a single company's automated moderation system can, without notice or reason, remove a developer from the ecosystem they've spent years building.
I'm not a security threat. I'm not a spammer. I'm not a bad actor. I'm a developer who woke up one morning and found years of work locked behind a door I cannot open, while the people who depend on that work get no explanation either.
Open source maintainers — especially independent ones without institutional backing — are disproportionately exposed to this risk. We don't have a legal team to write a letter. We don't have an enterprise contract that buys us a phone number to call. We have an email address and a tweet.
What I'm Doing While I Wait
- I'm mirroring critical repositories to a temporary account and orgs as a backup
- I've opened a temporary landing page at arkstack-tmp.toneflix.net for Arkstack
- I'm documenting everything here so there's a public record
- I'm continuing work locally and will push everything once access is restored
If you maintain packages that depend on anything under the Toneflix or H3ravel GitHub orgs and you're seeing issues, this is why. I haven't abandoned the projects. I'm locked out.
What GitHub Should Fix
This isn't a feature request, it's a baseline that should already exist:
- Suspension notifications should be mandatory, with a specific reason attached, before the account is locked, not after.
- The support portal should have an unauthenticated appeals path for suspended accounts. The current loop is not an oversight; it's a design failure.
- Automated suspensions should trigger a human review within 48 hours, not leave developers in limbo for weeks or months.
- Open source maintainers with active public repositories should have escalated review priority, given the downstream impact of losing access.
A Note to the Community
If you've experienced something similar, I'd genuinely like to hear about it in the comments. Not to vent, but because the more documented cases there are, the harder it is to dismiss this as a one-off.
And if you work at GitHub and you're reading this: my username is @3m1n3nc3. My email is on file. I haven't done anything wrong. I'd just like to get back to work.
Update: I'll edit this post as the situation develops. If the account is restored or I receive a reason, I'll document that here too.
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