It seems there is a way to get actual money from GitHub stars now
This means the stars lost their original meaning of just expressing what you like, as it is tied to monetization. Imagine how wild it would be if YouTube did this with likes of videos...
Didn't they already done such thing before?
You mean YouTube? I'm not aware of that.
I would be surprised, if you couldn't also sell an account with a bunch of stars on the black market to bot farm operators...
nice... so we need a github marketing campaign to fund the software that makes the world run? nice...