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
Rankfender
Happened to me too. Launch day, three people DM'd me offering "guaranteed top 5" for $100-$200. One of them was very insistent. I said no. Finished 11th. Some of the products ahead of me? Suspiciously few comments. Suspiciously few profiles with any history. You do the math.
The verification idea makes sense. I have 4 reviews, but I can't see them anywhere ( though they come from real users ) unless I dig through notifications. If those not showing, why not do the same with those upvotes ?
Also, why not show who upvoted? Not anonymously. Just like the comments section. If you upvote, your name shows up. Would make it harder to buy votes when everyone can see a bunch of empty profiles voting in unison.
P.S: here is a screenshot from a PH user ( one of the messages I've got )
FuseBase
I’m really glad to finally see this thread. Product Hunt has already done a lot of work to fight bots, and I’m sure a public statement will make this process even more effective. I believe every founder has something to share - launch day attacks are still happening, but they’ve become less frequent since the “Coming Soon” pages were removed.
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
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?
Raycast
@mazula95 that kind of exists, although it's for makers to reward quality comments.
More broadly, I would agree that the Product Hunt gameification would really use some expansion and deepening. It's really hard to know how to meaningfully participate in ways that are fun and prosocial that are not also primarily benefits to Product Hunt (e.g. writing reviews).
Reddit's reward system is much more user-oriented, IMO.
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.
A while back, a friend of mine launched a product and asked me to help vote for it. I was wondering: if I were to ask users on my own website or via email to cast votes—specifically those who have just recently registered—would their votes essentially be useless?
Product Hunt
@nancy62 encourage your users to apply for verification on Product Hunt. Or leave a thoughtful comment on a launch or forum thread.
Hello @mikekerzhner Good to see this being addressed openly.
Makes sense to weight votes based on credibility, otherwise it just becomes a pay-to-win system. The tricky part is not penalizing real new users while still filtering abuse.
Curious how you balance that long term without discouraging genuine newcomers from engaging.
Do we know the weight of our vote? I have signed up recently.
It's great to see the team being so transparent about the weighting system. The "zero-weight" approach for suspicious accounts is a solid deterrent, but I wonder if there’s room for a "reputation recovery" path for those well-intentioned new users—perhaps through a manual review or linking more social proof?
One thing I'd love to see is more real-time feedback for makers when a vote is flagged as low-quality; it would help them understand why their numbers might be fluctuating and keep the competition fair.
Product Hunt
@kevin_xu01 A great way to boost your account is to apply for verification.
@mikekerzhner Appreciate the clarification! Verification seems like the most straightforward way to build 'on-chain' trust here. It’s good to know the team prioritizes quality over quantity so clearly.