My upvotes are stuck at 3 — even though 50+ people have upvoted

I’m trying to figure out if I completely ruined my own launch today, and I'd love some insight from anyone who has launched recently. I have been away since it turned 12am getting poeple to upvote my goal was to get #1 but failed so bad.

I spent the last week prepping for this, and to get some initial momentum, I asked my existing community (outside of PH) to support us. Over 50 people have messaged me saying they upvoted, but my upvote has been stuck at 3 for the past 12 hours. Every time it ticks up, it immediately goes back down.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is it because they are newly created PH accounts, or does the algorithm penalize traffic coming from direct external links?

I am not sure if I am shadowbanned. I am not sure where I went wrong. Would love to know if this was a failed launch, or if there is a way to recover this. If anyone knows how to bypass this filter or signal to the algorithm that these are real users, I would really appreciate the advice.