How I Got 5,000 GitHub Followers In Less Than 24 Hours
After a discussion with a friend of mine I’ve decided to do a blog post about a program I created called “Githug”, and how I used to get to the front of Github.com.
Some background is necessary, I am very into designing web bots to do all sorts of crazy stuff. I often end up building bots just for the hell of it or just because I think something will be funny (to me at least!). I’d also like to state I don’t dislike Github in anyway rather I think they’re all pretty cool guys!
The Idea
The initial idea came to me while I was chilling in one of my college courses sitting next to my friend who is a solid programmer (something I sadly am not). He had an upcoming interview at a tech company that he was excited about and he mentioned that they would be checking his Github page to see code samples. I jokingly said that I should get him thousands of fake followers to “beef up” his page and make him look like a huge developer. We made some more jokes about what I’d call the bot and decided “Githug” would be a clever name. After joking I probed around Github’s registration system and found out that it didn’t seem like it’d be too complicated to do! I think the rest is a bit…self explanatory.
The Script (Githug)
My free-time is always what gets me in trouble :P
Excuse me for the stupid anime references, this whole thing was just a joke from the beginning.
The script was a pretty straightforward one, all it would do is utilize fake usernames from FakeNameGenerator in conjunction with a disposable email address service all over tor.
That’s quite a mouthful, but all it means is I put some effort into making it look not completely fake (to Github’s systems, in-case they would limit my account creations). After every account was created it would then follow my friend’s Github and logout immediately afterwards. The script would then change it’s exist node “identity” and repeat this process all over again – all while recording the created accounts for later use and noting any errors along the way.
For those who care, the script was created via my Metafid code generation tool which is PHP/cURL based. Yes, I do realize the irony of linking to my Github repo here 
Initial repo – a bit more cocky than I intended :)
The Results
I won’t mention what happened to my friend’s Github but let’s say it worked out very well for him (clever readers will probably find it regardless). I will however, post pictures of my Github when I ran this tool continuously for ~20 hours.
It begins! This was after a half hour I believe
Trending top for the current day
Trending for this week too!
Woot! Trending top for this month!
Looking completely legit on the frontpage :)
Gave me a chuckle
Received a few emails of this nature, had to disappoint them!
