Tell HN: Product Hunt is full of shill accounts, paid upvotes and spam
Today, it has become a pyramid scheme of paid upvotes, shill accounts, and rampant spam. And nobody is talking about it.
Have a look at Today's #2Product of the Day with 500+ upvotes. They are ALL sock puppet accounts, and most comments and upvotes within a short period of time.
The comments are all obvious astro-turfing, with names like "AccountHolder2". Most of the other top products of the day have the same problem. See for yourself here:
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/teyuto-2
Something is deeply rotten with Product Hunt. There are maybe 2 or 3 posts in the top products of the day that aren't full of utter garbage comments from fake accounts.
I shared a link to this before and it was marked as Dead. I'm assuming because the system thought it was promoting someone's Product Hunt launch rather than pointing out a huge failing in one of the most important communities online.
Most upvotes are commercially driven. It seems like something that could be fixed with reasonable moderation.