In a work context, for me at least, this class of reply can actually be pretty useful. It indicates somebody already minimally investigated a thing and may have at least some information about it, but they're hedging on certainty by letting me know "the robots say."

It's a huge asterisk to avoid stating something as a fact, but indicates something that could/should be explored further.

(This would be nonsense if they sent me an email or wrote an issue up this way or something, but in an ad-hoc conversation it makes sense to me)

I think this is different than on HN or other message boards, it's not really used by people to hedge here, if they don't actually personally believe something to be the case (or have a question to ask) why are they posting anyway? No value there.