Ask HN: Do people cheat Product Hunt?
We are Novu running for almost two years, and we have a big community.
The first place is a new product, how can they generate so many upvotes?
The first place is a new product, how can they generate so many upvotes?
Product Hunt tries their best to detect when bots are upvoting, and responds by removing those upvotes (you can see this happen on many hunts by looking at the upvote rate graph, if it takes a sharp almost impulse like decline that usually means PH is removing upvotes based on some kind of fraud protection they have)
I’m not sure why people still feel the need to cheat to get to number one on PH, it really doesn’t mean anything close to what it once did. Speaking from personal experience, a startup company I used to work for put great time and effort into their debut on PH, ended up in the top spot for the day, and got exactly 0 press, 0 new registrations that didn’t instantly churn, and 0 feedback on the product that was actually worthwhile. The only thing we did get on a daily basis was, you guessed it, emails from people also launching on PH asking for upvotes!
I always thought the point of PH isn’t prestige but eyeballs. Cheating to get to the top isn’t for bragging rights (still nice to have though), it’s to get more users.
How many news channels did you talk to before launch? How many emails and notifications did you send out? Yeah, it does piss people off, but this is where they "harvest". Often they align a PH launch with the official launch too, so people are more excited to upvote and such as opposed to a community that's been around for two years.
Hype also drowns down in time. An ideal hype window seems to start at max 3 months before launch, and usually drums up quickly near release.
Most of the trending stuff on PH now is AI too, so Novu still seems to be doing the best in category.