How do github unique clones work with push --force?

So I've been experimenting with a repository and editing commit timestamps, and using git push --force to get those changes into the remote repository, and I've noticed some odd behaviour with the traffic stats on the repo. What I'm doing is:

Make some new test file in the repo.
git commit -m "something".
GIT_COMMITTER_DATE=[new date] git commit --amend --no-edit --date [new date]
git push --force

It appears that every time I do this, I get 1 or 2 new unique clones on the repository, and I was wondering why this might be happening.

Solution

There isn't any intrinsic reason why a force push must imply a clone operation at all. If you're using a CI tool or GitHub Actions, then that's probably the reason, since those will clone repositories. Otherwise, there are feeds of activity on public repositories so it's possible for people to watch those and clone when changes occur.

Sometimes people do this to find credentials that are pushed to repositories and exploit them. A force-push might imply that someone accidentally pushed something secret, so those might be more interesting than normal.

I wouldn't worry about it, personally; it's just an interesting behavior.