Vote selling on Product Hunt

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

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?

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?

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?

I actually appreciate that you’re weighting votes differently. It makes sense, even if it might frustrate some legit new users.

Makes sense, so the trust score essentially scales with account tenure plus contribution quality. A follow-up: do you also detect (and act on) the inverse case, like old accounts that went dormant for years and suddenly start upvoting, often a sign they've been sold or compromised? That seems like a harder pattern to catch than fresh fake accounts.

Hi Mike. Thanks for the thread, now I know you're aware of the problem. I think that every active maker on the platform could name dozens of accounts that are involved in upvote farm activities. And it's quite easy to identify what products use fake upvotes to get to the top. A couple of days one product was actively promoted by the mafia, which allowed them to steal the #3 spot in the last hour.

Love the transparency in terms of how the calculation works; it's amazing how it helps creators who are confused about how the numbers differ between launch day and the real votes.

The one thing I hope we can do is offer more transparency in terms of launch as to why there are uncounted votes.

We don't have to mention which user it was, but just help the creator understand that the system works as intended, so there won't be any confusion regarding the numbers.

On another note, there were numerous vote-selling DMs during our launch; within the first hour, we got many. It would be best if you can provide a direct link to report them from the DM itself.