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
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.
Mockin
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.