My account was flagged as a comment spammer on Product Hunt
Look, I am not typically one to complain about mistakes. They happen, it sucks, but that's life. What's most frustrating is that I was never told or notified about it. My account worked exactly the same, I could still participate in upvotes & comments, and I could still see my own comments. But after about a week of no reaction from the community, I thought something must be wrong. That's when I noticed that my activity was only visible to me - which is very clever for actual spammers, but the experience utterly sucks for real members, especially long-time ones.
I mean, I'm there since 2016, I have a few hundred followers, and had close to a 1000 upvotes. I replied to replies, and dedicated genuine time to provide constructive feedback, unlike the obvious comments that I see on a daily basis. I've recently also found a few bugs in PH itself, which they already fixed. Yet, I was flagged as a spammer, and all the comments in the history of my time on Product Hunt suddenly not visible anymore. wow.
Support this time took a bit longer than usual, but I did get a response within 24hrs on a weekend (thanks for that). But, here it is:
"Thanks for reaching out. I've reset your account. You should be able to comment, post, and participate on Product Hunt now ... It looks like your account was flagged as a comment spammer by mistake ... If you run into any other issues, please let us know. We're always happy to help."
That's it, no apologies, ok. But I noticed that my old comments are still not visible, and I asked why I wasn't notified about anything, suggested some improvements, and what should I do to prevent this from happening again. Here's what I got:
"Thank you for your feedback; we are continuously working on improving our systems; right now, we are focusing on moderating comments for artificially generated content, so I believe that because most of your comments are very similar to each other in terms of structure, they were taken as being AI-generated. My recommendation is that you mix it up a bit more in terms of the style and content of your comments. Rest assured, most of your comments will be visible again soon."
Seriously? 1) I have to put effort to not look like an AI, and 2) "most of your comments" ...
Uh, come on guys. This sucks, I lost my motive now. I have my own system of leaving feedback, which always follows three main points, more-or-less. I cannot be the one responsible for making sure I don't get flagged again. I can think about numerous ways to detect human vs. AI, I mean, I take ages to write a single comment, delete words a couple of times at least, this is definitely already a sign I'm not AI.
I will stop grumbling now. I wanted to let the community know about this here, because I feel like I'm not the only one this happened to. In the past week, there was a sudden downward spike in comments & upvotes. And I have my doubts about how many of them that got flagged were actually artificial.
You'll still see me around there, I still like to see what's baking. But I wish the experience here will be improved.