The flip side is nothing stops a lot of users from starring something and that's it. The implied popularity of a library only comes from how active the project

The flip side is nothing stops a lot of users from starring something and that's it. The implied popularity of a library only comes from how active the project is, not how many stars it has. A recent example: I saw an advertisement on the freeway for some tire brand I've never heard of, with the quote "The most liked tire page on Facebook." What does liking (or in the case of staring something) have to do with the quality of the project, especially when liking/staring takes so little effort?