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Comment by aragonite | Hacker News Reader

This is probably a symptom of my severe boredom, but I tried to find the tweeted testimonials on Twitter, and it seems quite a few of the testimonials do not correspond to real tweets.

The testimonials by "@james", "@yoni", "@ktyr" are pretty obviously not real just from their implausibly short Twitter handles. The actual Twitter handles have different profile pics that simply don't match the ones displayed on the landing page. For example @ktyr is not an Indian male but an Asian girl who hasn't tweeted since 2012.

@prem_saini1 also is not the same person.

@emarky is the same person, but he doesn't seem to have tweeted the testimonial.

As I said, I'm just really bored :)

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If you inspect the DOM, some of the avatars mention Twitter URLs. Some reference other domains. "@james"'s avatar references Unsplash; here's the image, by Midas Hofstra: https://unsplash.com/photos/man-in-white-crew-neck-t-shirt-a...

The Unsplash one is possibly the most suspicious. The others might not be Twitter handles, or the person might not have said it in a tweet.

Good find, @yoni also it seems:

https://unsplash.com/photos/man-wearing-white-v-neck-shirt-i...

The ProductHunt link at the top suggests perhaps that is where the testimonials are from. It's not clear why you think they're meant to be tweets. A quick scan of the Product Hunt page quickly found at least one that has a reply saying they'll add it to the testimonials if ok.

Good point, but https://www.producthunt.com/@james/reviews didn't review this.

Nothing on the page says they are all reviews from producthunt, nor that the testimonials are all from public sources. I get being skeptical; my default assumption tends to be that testimonials are not to be trusted, but this seems excessive.

There’s another comment pointing out that one of the images are from unsplash. What more proof do you need?

Hope this clears it up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38820176

Here’s a tip: if you modify reviews for “privacy reasons”, there is literally nothing separating them from a fake review.

This is not how you build trust. If someone accepts being listed as a review there is no privacy concern, if they do not they shouldn’t be there at all.

That proves exactly nothing other than that one of the images is from unsplash. Why do you think it does?

Hey,

Every testimonial is real.

Not every testimonial is from Twitter.

Yoni's is from WhatsApp. James' is from Facebook Messenger.

A bunch of the others are from the Product Hunt launch: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/inbox-zero-2

The images/names for some aren't for privacy reasons. Although they'd probably be okay with me replacing those with their real names/images too.

@james said: "hey bro, your tool is legit what I been looking for for ages haha. its a god send"

So James tells use the tool is legit.. but is he legit himself?

James is a real person that uses the app, and said those exact words. Sent over private message. So you won't find it online.

The image isn't his actual face. And @james isn't his real handle.

To fake this quote would be next level creative. That's not what a faked quote looks like.

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