Just as replies to posts. Here's one example. It's hard to search for: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34694407

I can't see a single '*' in that thread and haven't seen any other '* * *' on HN. Do you have any third-party browser plugins installed that might cause this?

Maybe the users try to write Markdown to make words italics (https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)?