Private organization membership count is exposed in profile hovercards

[highestop]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Profile

Body

Summary

All of my organization memberships are set to Private, and my profile activity is also private. These organizations are not shown on my public profile.

However, when another user hovers over my avatar or username in the commit history of a public repository, the profile hovercard displays:

Member of and 2 more

Although the organization names are hidden, this still reveals that I belong to multiple organizations and exposes the membership count.

Steps to reproduce

1. Join multiple GitHub organizations.
2. Set the visibility of every organization membership to Private.
3. Confirm that the organizations are not displayed on the public profile.
4. Have another user open the commit history of a public repository.
5. Hover over the account's avatar or username.
6. Observe the “Member of … and N more” row in the profile hovercard.

Expected behavior

When all organization memberships are private, the public hovercard should omit the entire organization membership row. It should not reveal organization names, the existence of hidden memberships, or their count.

Actual behavior

The organization names remain hidden, but the hovercard exposes the number of memberships through the text “and 2 more.”

Why this matters

The existence and number of private organization memberships are relationship metadata. Displaying this information appears inconsistent with the memberships being configured as private and with those organizations being hidden from the public profile.

GitHub Docs state that organization membership visibility is private by default and that users can choose to publicize individual memberships:

• https://docs.github.com/en/account-and-profile/concepts/organization-membership
• https://docs.github.com/en/account-and-profile/how-tos/organization-membership/publicizing-or-hiding-organization-membership

Screenshots

1. Public profile with private activity

2. Hovercard exposing the organization membership count

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