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GitHub's fake star economy

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Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#121

Post by hgoel »

onion2k wrote: post #68
ernst_klim wrote: post #63

I think people expect the star system to be a cheap proxy for "this is a reliable piece of sorfware which has a good quality and a lot of eyes". I think as a proxy it fails completely: astroturfing aside stars don't guarantee popularity (and I bet the correlation is very weak, a lot of very fundamental system libraries have small number of stars). Stars also don't guarantee the quality. And given that you can read th…

given that you can read the code, stars seem to be a completely pointless proxy Imagine you're choosing between 3 different alternatives, and each is 100,000 LOC. Is 'reading the code' really an option? You need a proxy. Stars isn't a good one because it's an untrusted source. Something like a referral would be much better, but in a space where your network doesn't have much knowledge a proxy like stars is the only o…

I don't think I have ever even considered using star count as a factor for picking from alternatives.

Looking at the commit history, closed vs open issues and pull requests provides a much more useful signal if you can't decide from the code.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#124

Post by mauvehaus »

Can anyone explain why on earth VC's are making actual investment decisions based on imaginary internet points? This would be like an NFL team drafting a quarterback based on how many instagram followers they have rather than a relevant metric like pass completion, or god forbid, doing some work and actually scouting candidates. Maybe the Cleveland Browns would do that[0], but it's not a way to mount a serious Super Bowl campaign[1].

Are VC's just that lazy about making investment decisions? Is this yet another side-effect of ZIRP[2] and too much money chasing a return? Is nobody looking too hard in the hope of catching the next rocket to the moon?

From the outside, investing based on GitHub stars seems insane. Like, this can't be a serious way of investing money. If you told me you were going to invest my money based on GitHub stars, I'd laugh, and then we'd have an awkward silence while I realize there isn't a punchline coming.

[0] I'm from Cleveland. I get to pick on them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Cleveland_Browns_seaso... I think their record speaks for itself.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_interest-rate_policy

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#125

Post by psychoslave »

whatisthiseven wrote: post #106

I don't think I have ever used stars in making a decision to use a library and I don't understand why anyone would. Here are the things I look at in order: * last commit date. Newer is better * age. old is best if still updating. New is not great but tolerable if commits aren't rapid * issues. Not the count, mind you, just looking at them. How are they handled, what kind of issues are lingering open. * some of the co…

You call these baubles, well, it is with baubles that men are led... Do you think that you would be able to make men fight by reasoning? Never. That is only good for the scholar in his study. The soldier needs glory, distinctions, and rewards.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Napoleon

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#127

Post by evilsocket »

fontain wrote: post #59

https://x.com/garrytan/status/2045404377226285538 “gstack is not a hypothetical. It’s a product with real users: 75,000+ GitHub stars in 5 weeks 14,965 unique installations (opt-in telemetry, so real number is at least 2x higher) 305,309 skill invocations recorded since January 2026 ~7,000 weekly active users at peak” GitHub stars are a meaningless metric but I don’t think a high star count necessarily indicates boug…

[dead]

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#128

Post by evilsocket »

hobofan wrote: post #74
dafi70 wrote: post #3

Honest question: how can VCs consider the 'star' system reliable? Users who add stars often stop following the project, so poorly maintained projects can have many stars but are effectively outdated. A better system, but certainly not the best, would be to look at how much "life" issues have, opening, closing (not automatic), and response times. My project has 200 stars, and I struggle like crazy to update regularly…

Unless something has changed in the last ~3 years, I think the article vastly overstates the credibility with VC's. Even 10 years ago most VCs we spoke to had wisened up and discarded Github stars as a vanity metric.

Agree that sophisticated funds don't, but the ecosystem hasn't caught up. StarHub/GitStar pricing pages still sell to "seed-stage founders pre-fundraise"

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#129

Post by evilsocket »

bjourne wrote: post #49

> The CMU researchers recommended GitHub adopt a weighted popularity metric based on network centrality rather than raw star counts. A change that would structurally undermine the fake star economy. GitHub has not implemented it. > As one commenter put it: "You can fake a star count, but you can't fake a bug fix that saves someone's weekend." I'm curious what the research says here---can you actually structurally und…

that's exactly the next-round attack. StarScout's network-centrality defense works for the current generation of campaigns but won't survive LLM-generated PR/commit patterns

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#130

Post by ethegwo »

dukeyukey wrote: post #96
ethegwo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a partner decides to recommend a startup to the investment committee, he needs some explicit reasons to convince the committee, not some kind of implicit vibe

But given the amount of astroturfing and star-buying out there, relying on star counts may well select for deceptive founders.

Yes, I think VCs have already switched to using other metrics that are less easy to fake, such as download per month or customer interviews (or more direct, ARR, even for really early stage startups). I just want to explain the background reason of it.
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