That was a bit shocking to me to learn.
I always expected there was a market for fake stars. I am trying to get a repo naturally to 1000 stars, but I would never buy them.
Unnatural: pay some bot runner to buy stars.
I prefer natural as the stars are a metric not an end goal.
That's how record labels can simply decide what's going to be the next summer hit. They pick a song and promote the hell out of it. It's not the summer hit because it was somehow better, just more promoted.
That just shifts the question to why is "reach" something worth wanting?
> some people with snap judge a project by number of stars and more likely use it if it has a bunch.
And why do you want these users?
2. they may just be busy users, looking for something for their job.
I take on board your point though. The stars thing isn't the biggest consideration by a long shot. Probably the smallest!
It's unfortunate as I've seen stars used as a metric of trustworthiness in general user discussions.