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This doesn't surprise me at all... Just like bots in games. Selling a service that benefits another. Its shady, but definitely believable.
Also, what if this is an actual viable way to "market" for an open source project?
Amazing. Good thing I don’t use GitHub :)
Also cybersecurity implications here. Nefarious actors can prop up their evildoings with fake stars and pose as legitimate projects.
my first thought. I usually rely on stars for "trustworthiness" of random projects before running their code.
Ironically an open source project with under 100 stars now seems more trustworthy by default because you can be sure they aren't lying
I almost commented something like "thats extremely overpriced, why dont you set up a raspberry pi to do it for you for free" and then i realized the people who could do that dont need fake stars.
On the one hand, one Raspberry Pi would not really suffice. As @theherk@lemmy.world argued, you would need legitimate email addresses, which would require either circumventing the antibot measures of providers like Google or setting up your own network of domains and email servers. Besides that, GitHub would (hopefully) notice the barrage of API requests from the same network. To avoid that and make your API requests seem legitimate, you would need infrastructure to spread your requests in time and across networks. You would either build and maintain that infrastructure yourself –which would be expensive for a single star-boosting operation– or, well, pay for the service. That's why these things exist.
On the other hand, although bad programmers might use these services to star-boost their otherwise mediocre code, as you suggest, there are other –at least conceivable, if not yet proven– use cases, such as:
What is Twidium's deal? They are the most expensive and take the longest.
Obviously their stars are the bestest
Got to make it look organic and viral.
I think you're joking, but if their accounts dont get banned immediately and the stars removed a week after you pay, then their stars are actually the bestest
There's a chance their stars take so long because they might be using click farms to manually generate them which would be harder for spam detection to catch compared to generating stars with bots and hacked accounts, since technically there are actually x many people actually giving you stars, they're just being paid to do so.
Its not good that some of these are instant. I guess they try to make it look organic.
Bespoke artisanal stars!
Can we get a nice chart for Upvotes on Reddit costs? Asking for a friend. /s
I am not a programmer. But I have been using github as an end user for years, downloading programs I like and whatnot. Today I realized there are stars on github. Literally never even noticed.
The stars are more important when you're a developer. It indicates interest in the project, and when it's a library you might want to use that translates into how well maintained it might be and what level of official and unofficial support you might get from it.
Other key things to look at are how often are they doing releases and committing changes, how long bugs are left open, if pull requests sit there forever without being merged in etc.
And if the developers were to give up on the project, how likely it would be for someone to fork it and continue.
There is a clear situation in Foss( even more in self hosting) where projects are presented as free open source but they are intended to monetize at the end and use the community help for development.
There's nothing inherently wrong with monetizing FOSS. People gotta eat.
You can buy any metric on the web. Amazon reviews, YouTube subscribers and likes, X followers, Reddit karma, …. I am not surprised that GitHub stars are one of them.
On the Caveat Emptor ("Let the buyer beware") side of things, I look at other metrics well before I rely on stars.
How many contributors does it have? How many active forks? How many pull requests? How many issues are open and how many get solved and how often and how lively are the discussions? When was the last merge? How active is the maintainer?
Stars might as well be facebook likes imo: when used as intended, they didn't say much more than "this is what the majority of people like" (surprise, I'm on lemmy bc I have other priorities than what's popular), now they mean nothing at all.
Why would it be? Software is good based on it's use and recommendations from real folk, not *s. Many project not on github
But stars equal discoverabiliy, or at least contribute a good chunk to it.
Sure if you browse by github but in my use of the site over the years I go to the repo from the webpage of the project or from another source such as a link from a blog or something.
I never went with a software project from random scrolling. It has no value to me if it doesn't meet a need I have right now.
No contributor is going to be good that doesn't use it.
Well for me personally if I am seeking an application to solve a problem and there are 2 comparable options which are on github, I will first try the one with more stars. Especially if there is a large discrepancy.
When I compare a github vs a non-github project I take into consideration that the other code forge has fewer users, and also I generally prefer devs who take the initiative to get off github. So I will usually give them a go unless the project is too incomplete/stale/inactive.
Yeah, I'd argue that the project can be good and not widely used. Do you think that there are projects with real use case and are great open source software and not widely used because its buried under the *s?
It could be a relatively inexpensive way for niche marketing. Especially if the developer has a payment option with the software. Probably a decent way to get the software out in the open for profitability, no?
From a pragmatic standpoint, yeah it would accomplish that goal. However, that discounts the intended purpose of the stars, which is to represent an individuals attribution of personal value and trust. They lose significance and become misleading if you can buy them, which holds true even for good software. When we see a github star is should represent someone who has used the software, finds value in it or who respects and trusts the project.
That is more down to poor marketing. Here on Lemmy or reddit there are big open source communities where you can extol the values of it.
Also, what if this is an actual viable way to “market” for an open-source project?
I am fortunate enough to not market my stuff:
If somebody finds and can make use of it. Great.
In the other case who cares? Didn't hurt or cost me anything to publish it.
Fake GitHub stares have other implications: Typosquatting is a real issue and fake stars make it more convincing that it is the genuine project.
Shocking, a site full of diy programmers and hackers are trying to hack the system. Maybe even just for fun.
Programming never needed these sorts of social media features in the first place. Do you part by getting your projects off of Microsoft’s social media platform used to try to sell you Copilot AI & take a cut of your donations to projects with Sponsors.
For anyone interested in reading more on this type of thing, the colloquial term seems to be "SMM panel" where SMM is "social media marketing". EN Wikipedia has nothing of course, but DE has this: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMM-Panel.
Link doesn't work for me on mobile.
Why would the En version "obviously" have nothing?
Why do you say it's obvious that the English wiki "has nothing"?
how is twidium managing to charge so much more?
Their stars are hand crafted from raw virginal pixels by blind monks using only their toes.
Why a real person would star a project? When I star a project then my GitHub home is littered with activity from that project. I hate that, so I never star anything
you can turn off notifications from starred projects