Vote selling on Product Hunt
Every day, after launching, makers are contacted on LinkedIn and X by people offering to sell votes. As the Product Hunt team, we are very much aware of this and really hate it. We have systems in place to neutralize this type of gaming. Every vote counts for a different number of points on Product Hunt. A couple examples:
An account with a recently created gmail address and no history of quality contributions on Product Hunt: this vote will count for 0 points. Yes, this might be a well intentioned user, but we take a conservative approach to protect the community. If the account has a company email or applies for verification on Product Hunt, that's a different story.
An account with a company email address linked to a legitimate LinkedIn account with a history of meaningful contributions on Product Hunt: this vote carries significant weight.
A couple questions for the community:
Are there specific accounts on Product Hunt that you suspect participate in vote selling? You can reply here or email report@producthunt.co
What would you want to see us do differently here?
Replies
My biggest takeaway is that community reputation compounds.
A thoughtful comment history and a credible profile seem far more defensible than any launch-day growth hack.
It would be interesting to hear examples of “good launch behavior” that usually correlates with real momentum.
The hardest part as a founder is not only saying no to shady outreach, but also not knowing whether unusual spikes are organic or coordinated. Even limited trust signals around account quality could help without revealing the full anti-gaming logic.
New thread idea: What signals make someone feel a Product Hunt account is genuinely part of the community rather than only appearing around launches?
I think this becomes a networking issue as much as a platform issue.
When genuine support and coordinated lobbying start to look similar, founders get more cautious about every outreach message they receive.
That weakens the community even beyond the leaderboard itself.
Mailwarm
I just found myself "maybe" discussing with a bot 🤖 😂
The weird thing is the conversation feel interesting and not AI generated.
But the number of upvotes and answers ratio with the rest of my post didn't make sens, so I checked the profiles, everything was new + the X account linked to the profile is restricted. @amelia_martin7 @joseph_walker2 can you pass the captcha test ?
1+7-8 = ?
Unfortunately, it looks like the platform has become a popularity contest. Most of the voting volume is very well coordinated and mostly paid for. Product Hunt used to be a place where people could launch there products and get organic feedback and takes with the possibility of getting noticed organically. Now it is gamified to point where if you don't have distribution channels lined up and well maintained, then you will get drowned in a list of other projects who have don't mostly inorganically through upvote campaigns (not bots btw nor fresh accounts), campaigns that pay per upvote from real people. Those who that go the organic route get rinsed off attention and pushed to the bottom of the list
Fuser
Yes this happened to me when we launched Fuser in the fall last year. It was my first product, and I rallied up all of our community who cared so much to see our success. A lot of them told me they tried to even leave a review (and they were users), and it never showed up. It genuinely was really disheartening, and I wish I had know. On the otherhand, I had so many people reach out to pay for their vote. I simply ignored it, because I knew I'd be contributing to the problem that got me here in the first place. If we embed the product hunt button inside our product, do the users who signup through this channel get penalized for being a new user?
Kipps AI
I'm repeatedly getting messages in my LinkedIn DM by people selling votes(100/200/300) for a couple of hundred bucks.
Also, it feels slight disappointment when I see there is no level playing field if some products use their services and get better ranking than those who are launching with utmost honesty
@Product Hunt, is there any way that we can report LinkedIn profiles of those people, and it can map the corresponding Product Hunt profile?
Really appreciate the transparency here. As a first-time maker who just launched today (SpeedSpeaks — shopify speed audit tool), this is reassuring to read.
I have zero network on PH and was genuinely worried about how to get quality upvotes without resorting to shady tactics. Good to know the algorithm rewards real engagement over volume.
For fellow first-time makers — focus on genuine outreach, not vote farms. The PH team is clearly watching 👀
Any advice for solo founders launching without an existing audience?
Clera
Hi @mikekerzhner do accounts with a recent history count less than older accounts or is it more determining if a vote is counted at all or nothing? Also trying to understand if the upvote count could also mean that fewer people with an high associated upvote ranking upvoted it than total number of likes?
Stylar
I actually appreciate that you’re weighting votes differently. It makes sense, even if it might frustrate some legit new users.