<story><title>Tell HN: Product Hunt is full of shill accounts, paid upvotes and spam</title><text>Product Hunt was once a curated collection of interesting new products, shared to a small newsletter list of enthusiasts.&lt;p&gt;Today, it has become a pyramid scheme of paid upvotes, shill accounts, and rampant spam. And nobody is talking about it.&lt;p&gt;Have a look at Today&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;The comments are all obvious astro-turfing, with names like &amp;quot;AccountHolder2&amp;quot;. Most of the other top products of the day have the same problem. See for yourself here:&lt;p&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.producthunt.com&amp;#x2F;posts&amp;#x2F;teyuto-2&lt;p&gt;Something is deeply rotten with Product Hunt. There are maybe 2 or 3 posts in the top products of the day that aren&amp;#x27;t full of utter garbage comments from fake accounts.&lt;p&gt;I shared a link to this before and it was marked as Dead. I&amp;#x27;m assuming because the system thought it was promoting someone&amp;#x27;s Product Hunt launch rather than pointing out a huge failing in one of the most  important communities online.&lt;p&gt;Most upvotes are commercially driven. It seems like something that could be fixed with reasonable moderation.</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Kaotique</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Teyuto is a product that allows you to create a customized video channel, which is also available on all mobile and smart tv applications!
The comment must be original and different from any other user e positive about the product.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;They even forgot to remove the instruction on how to write the original comment. What a joke.&lt;p&gt;When we launched on PH we did zero marketing for it and you do get some nice comments and replies from it. Even with zero marketing we managed to get top 10 of the day, but I am sure you can really game the system with some real effort or by using a bunch of fake supporters.</text></comment>
<story><title>Tell HN: Product Hunt is full of shill accounts, paid upvotes and spam</title><text>Product Hunt was once a curated collection of interesting new products, shared to a small newsletter list of enthusiasts.&lt;p&gt;Today, it has become a pyramid scheme of paid upvotes, shill accounts, and rampant spam. And nobody is talking about it.&lt;p&gt;Have a look at Today&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;The comments are all obvious astro-turfing, with names like &amp;quot;AccountHolder2&amp;quot;. Most of the other top products of the day have the same problem. See for yourself here:&lt;p&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.producthunt.com&amp;#x2F;posts&amp;#x2F;teyuto-2&lt;p&gt;Something is deeply rotten with Product Hunt. There are maybe 2 or 3 posts in the top products of the day that aren&amp;#x27;t full of utter garbage comments from fake accounts.&lt;p&gt;I shared a link to this before and it was marked as Dead. I&amp;#x27;m assuming because the system thought it was promoting someone&amp;#x27;s Product Hunt launch rather than pointing out a huge failing in one of the most  important communities online.&lt;p&gt;Most upvotes are commercially driven. It seems like something that could be fixed with reasonable moderation.</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>smt88</author><text>Maybe I was too late to PH, but it always seemed to be this way to me.&lt;p&gt;For years, &amp;quot;#1 on ProductHunt&amp;quot; is a strong signal to me to stay away. It means the product is not much more than a landing page and is run by marketers trying to fake it until they make it.</text></comment>