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
Velocity: AI User testing
I'd love to see some case studies and retrospectives on a YouTube channel of those who's launches faired well. I'd really appreciate some clarity on a break down of how they managed to score so comparatively well on any given launch day.
Launching takes so much heart and soul, fear uncertainty and doubt creeps in. Posts documenting how to meet expectations are great, guidelines like these should be included in the pre-launch dashboard and as much as possible embedded into rewards along the journey of Product Hunt (as they are). First joiners are familiar with SEO and marketers and wanting to drum up support so likely aren't ill intentioned, they just don't realise that it's working against their true aims to be credibility represented.
Ollang DX
A Google Maps Local Guides–style system could work well here.
Instead of weighing only votes, you could give different weights to different types of contributions: meaningful comments, longer feedback, screenshots, proof of product usage, and consistent participation over time. That would make it much harder to game and also encourage people to actually try the product and share real feedback, which is far more valuable for makers. What do you think?
Nack AI
I launched last years ago, and I must admit the user verification side of things has improved a lot since I was last around. I would like to think things have improved and that the team are still working on improving things further.
Not big on snitching on people who are trying to game a system but there is certainly a whole community of folks offering to help hit X ranking or provide (not just in-kind) support for X$ per (whatever metric).
I have a launch coming up after supporting / participating in the community for a number of years and I don't think theres a whole lot you can do beyond finding the bad actors. But presume those bad actors just end up supporting a launch they weren't compensated for - you can't really penalize the company who they're supporting.
I think the worst outcome is great product getting lost in a sea of PPV or PPUV and I'd agree that a certain amount of user verification / more stringent policy as it relates to pay for X on the app.
I also don't think its a terrible idea to deploy secret shopper launches / have some of your community members try to get those inbound solicitations / proof - could help curb that practice with obviously banning the account but also.. a degree of fear - if they reach out - their accounts will be banned.
Great to hear the team is digging into this also ***^