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
Great to hear this! We’ve been trying to approach our launches with integrity and avoid any kind of system gaming.
That said, it did feel a bit discouraging at times—like the playing field wasn’t always level. Really appreciate the transparency and the effort to address it.
Have you considerd introducing a lightweight identity verification (like social or domain linking) that helps legit users gain voting weight faster?
@charlotte_combes I just joined PH not too long ago and they asked for verification through LinkedIn, Github, and work email. I'm not sure if those contribute to voting weight (or simply negatively impact those who don't verify).
Product Hunt
@charlotte_combes yep, we have user verification.
I received 10 different requests just for that for a project with 1 or 2 upvotes (my bad for the lame prep...)
Product Hunt
@squerne Always worth it to launch, even if you don't get traction the first few times.
Apparent for Gmail
Hit 4th place on Sat, and personally didn't receive any solicitations, which is encouraging. I'm a new user though?
I would say keeping your "secret sauce" private, in terms of how you filter votes, likely might be valuable to prevent gaming of the system.
Product Hunt
@apparentforgmail Congrats on the 4th place. Glad to hear there were no solicitations.
Apparent for Gmail
@mikekerzhner Thanks! overall, very impressed with the platform.
PopTask
just launched PopTask today and i've already gotten 12 to 15 DMs on LinkedIn and directly in my email inbox offering to sell upvotes
it's frustrating because as a solo maker you want real feedback, not fake numbers
good to know the team has systems to catch this, appreciate it 🙌🏽
i'll forward the account details on your provided email 💯
Product Hunt
@lilhadi Congrats on the launch! Sounds great RE the report.
Free AI Video Editor OpenCutAI
I had the same issue, more than 5 people reached out to me to sell me upvotes for $100-$1000.
I spoke about the same issue few days back here:
https://www.producthunt.com/p/producthunt/introducing-randomized-leaderboard-day-on-product-hunt?comment=5242927
Tobira.ai
Honest take: the problem isn't the DMs (we got plenty after our launch last week, declined all of them). The real problem is the opacity of the system itself.
When you can't tell how much a vote weighs or where it came from, you can't trust the leaderboard. And when you watch certain products spike, drop, then spike again - that pattern speaks for itself, but there's no way to call it out with confidence.
Fighting the supply of fake votes is a losing battle. Fighting the incentive to buy them - by making vote quality visible - is where the leverage actually is. Even a simple signal like "this vote came from a verified account with X history" would change the dynamic completely.
Appreciate you opening this up publicly. That's a start.
StreamAlive - Interactive PPT slides
We stopped adding our new launches to Product Hunt because of all the vote solicitation messages we got, but with our latest launch we were pleasantly surprised by how few solicitations we got. It restored our faith in the PH voting system because if people aren't soliciting it means that their fake votes are not having much impact on the algorithm
Another thing I know happens is that people have set up agents to upvote most or all products every day on their behalf so that they can get to the top of the streak leaderboard, but I don't think anything needs to be done about that.
Really appreciate this transparency from the PH team. Vote integrity is what makes the leaderboard meaningful - if you can buy your way to the top, the signal breaks down for everyone.
As someone launching Hello Aria on April 10th (an AI productivity assistant that manages your day through WhatsApp and iOS), this hits close to home. We have been doing things the honest way: genuine community engagement, early users who actually love the product. Watching vote-selling undermine that is frustrating.
The account quality signals you described (email-linked LinkedIn, contribution history) make a lot of sense. A verified organic backer badge for accounts that clear a trust threshold would reinforce the right behavior.