This shows that anyone who markets FOSS projects with statements like "It has 12k stars on GitHub!" is either clueless about this kind of manipulation, or compl

This shows that anyone who markets FOSS projects with statements like "It has 12k stars on GitHub!" is either clueless about this kind of manipulation, or complicit in it. I have previously expressed skepticism about how useful stars are in the first place, but this is pretty clear evidence that they are basically minor ads that can be bought and sold on the marketplace. As such, I will be examining open source projects that emphasize their star count in marketing a lot more closely from now on.