Precisely this. I often check GitHub profiles if a candidate provides them, but I have the same experience. It's often times completely empty, or just a half-finished tutorial. Once it looked like a really active developer (like commits on almost all days), but that was from a repo with generated commits to make the GitHub contribution history look nice... not actual work.

Tip: If you're applying and want people to look at your repo. Mention this in either your cover letter or on top of your resume. If it's empty, better to leave the link out altogether.