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
on your second question, the thing id change is when the weighting becomes visible. right now a maker only finds out after a flat launch, and the conclusion they draw is that the product was bad, when the real story might be that their supporters were invisible. i hit this today. i hunted something and had to tell two people that their new gmail accounts would carry no weight. the only reason i knew is this thread, which is five months old and which they would never have found on their own. neither of them was gaming anything, they made accounts to help. if the settings page told someone their vote currently carries reduced weight and what raises it, honest new users would fix it and the sellers would learn nothing, becuase the sellers already know. thats the asymmetry i keep coming back to. the policy is only a secret from the people it isnt aimed at. on the first question, i dont have names, and i dont think id post them if i did. an accusation with no evidence costs an innocent account far more than it costs an actual seller. the report address you listed is the right shape for that.