GitHub received 708 government takedown requests in the first half of 2026, compared with 98 for all of 2025, the company said in a transparency update published on the GitHub Blog.
GitHub said the jump reflects a change in methodology rather than more content being removed: it now counts every government request it receives, including duplicates, instead of only requests that resulted in action, according to the post.
The update also covers state legislation GitHub is tracking. California's SB 1000, which addresses labeling AI-generated content, originally would have required license revocation for noncompliance, a provision GitHub called "fundamentally incompatible with widely used open source licenses"; the final version adopted a narrower notice-and-response approach instead, the company said. GitHub also flagged age verification bills in California and Colorado, saying Colorado's revised version "addressed key concerns about impacts on open source software," while Illinois signed its own age assurance law that GitHub said still raises implementation questions.
None of this changes how anyone pushes code today. But the takedown count and the state law fights are two of the levers that could change what is legal to host on GitHub, and the company is actively lobbying on both rather than just reporting them.