I thought that the question "Why?" asked about this particular fragment of GP's comment:

> I don’t think I have ever starred anything on Github. (...)

Not to the particular situation of fixes for likes. Therefore the answer:

> because I don't give out fake likes.

was thought to be an answer to question: "Why haven't you ever starred anything on Github?". With this in mind I just wanted to say that likes do not have to be fake. You can like what you like. It may be a bit off the general topic of fixes for likes, but not off the more general topic of Github likes.

In this particular case I don't know what I would do. Probably if I really needed it I would just comply. If I already would have liked it or was close to it I would probably also just do it. In other cases when I would have thought about this as a courtesy I would drop it.

I have a bunch of repositories liked. I use it as a bookmark and a signal of interest for maintainers. As much as one would want to claim Github stars are not meaningless Internet points. A search engine will promote more starred repositories more, more people in general will think about using the thing. It is not a perfect measure of course, but it is not meaningless signal. It may often not mean much, but most of the time it is more meaningful than not. For my particular interests I often seek out repositories that have not the most stars, but also not the least.