Bots Rigging Votes? Our Difficulties with Product Hunt
Eric Cheng
29 replies
Yesterday we launched Jobright AI and reached #1 of the day at the end of the 24-hr competition. Despite our initial success, we were later adjusted to #2. The new #1 seemingly used bots for upvotes, evident from sudden and significant increases within minutes all the day. We would like to share this detailed story and hear your thoughts.
Jobright's ranking at the end of the day: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZWEnUZ2uyqo-LiIQ3I9NbB6nEPuO7uC1/view?usp=sharing
Our voting trajectory has been consistently smooth and gradually rising, showing a steady increase. Although there was a significant gap between us and our competitor at the beginning, but thanks to our amazing users and community, our votes began to catch up. However, every time we approached or briefly surpassed our competitor, their vote count suddenly spiked by a large number almost instantly, and our competitor’s votes surged at a bot-like speed.
Comparing Voting Trends: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hhNuGxETypnIF7BiGZDCOSfKxuobInCJ/view?usp=sharing
Here’s a more detailed timeline that we'd love to share:
- 0:00AM - 4:00PM: we remained consistently in the #2 position. Although there was a big gap between us and our competitor at the beginning, both our upvote numbers grew steadily.
- Around 4:00 PM, our upvote numbers started getting closer to our competitor's, at one point trailing by only 12 upvotes.
- Starting from 4 PM until the last few hours, the curve of our competitor's upvotes experienced 3 steep climbs at bot-like speed (50 - 100 upvotes within 1 minute).
- During the last few hours, thanks to the support from our friends and user community, we did our best to gather upvotes. However, our competitor continued to receive upvotes at an unusually rapid pace.
Our Competitor's 3 Steep Climbs:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M9-tcrWOaL4mcdllIlugXLIFzKIEKJLL/view?usp=sharing
Moreover, we noticed that we have more comments than our competitor. Many of our friends and users have shown their support and shared their experiences with the PH community under our post.
The Difference in Comment Numbers: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kY1pfk-TypF1JdFdMcLEuV7VADNH0328/view?usp=sharing
At 0:00 AM PST on July 17th, after an intense day of competition, even with our competitor using bots for their upvote, we were initially ranked first of the day. However, after Product Hunt performed a cleanup and adjustment of votes for the top products, our competitor became first while we were moved to second place.
We deeply appreciate the support from everyone who has stood by us. We trust Product Hunt to be a fair platform that celebrates genuinely creative products, but we believe our competitor’s actions have compromised the fairness of the community.
We look forward to hearing your thoughts on this matter.
Replies
Aleksandr Sabri@userio_neimio
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Oh, come on.
You're running bots yourself, and very actively at that. Both on upvotes and on comments. We are also with you in the race for the product of the week and closely watch how you stick to 25 upvotes as soon as we narrow the gap, although before that you for half a day did not gain 10. Because of people like you the product hunt turns into a race of bots who are faster, more cunning and better at pretending to be a normal user. Share full screenshots of the graphs on launch day, not just the ones you are comfortable with. You got cut off over 200 votes and dozens of comments. You and those you accuse have the same bots with 0 activity and comments and likes in both projects. Calm down guys with your bots you will definitely get the badges you need, honest projects with you very difficult to compete, believe me, because we are competing with you.
Share
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Usually, we aim to launch on a product hunt to gain real users, feedback, and healthy competition. Honestly, it will be a hectic week when you plan to launch on Producthut, and someone using a bot to crash your success to become number one would be a disappointment.
If this happens, the PH team must work on this issue. People trust PH launches and take all comments seriously; I do. But nowadays, most comments seem to be GhatGPT, which means standard polished comments. Also, some agencies help you gain fake upvotes, and those upvotes make no sense but create an illusion of the best in the market.
I appreciate those founders who genuinely do good things and do not fake things.
Hello,
As a fellow community member on Product Hunt, I want to extend my support and commend you for the incredible effort you and your team have put into launching Jobright AI. It's truly a testament to the power of community and the importance of genuine engagement.
The situation you've described is disheartening, to say the least. The essence of Product Hunt is its community-driven approach, where creators and users alike can celebrate innovation and creativity in a fair and transparent manner. The use of bots or any artificial means to manipulate votes undermines the integrity of the platform and the trust we place in it.
Your detailed account of the voting trajectory and the comparison with your competitor's suspicious spikes highlight a concerning trend. It's evident that your team has worked hard to earn every upvote and comment organically, which is something to be proud of. The community's support and the number of comments under your post are clear indicators of genuine interest and engagement.
I believe that Product Hunt values the spirit of fair competition and the community's voice. It's crucial that the platform takes these concerns seriously and ensures that the competition remains a level playing field for all participants.
I hope that this experience doesn't dampen your spirits or the spirit of the community. Continue to focus on the innovation and value that Jobright AI brings, and know that many of us in the community appreciate the authenticity of your efforts.
Keep pushing forward, and let's continue to support each other in this vibrant ecosystem of creators and enthusiasts.
Jobright AI
@chouti Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I completely agree. Product Hunt has always been a community-driven platform, and the key to its success is fostering a fair culture. We are also eager to continue engaging here and grow together. However, after putting in so much effort to prepare and strive for every single vote, it's very disheartening to see some projects easily gain 50-100 votes in a minute using bots.
Spellar AI
PH has turned into a real farm for upvotes.
It seems like it's a single call center that takes orders, starts promoting a certain product, then receives an order for upvotes for another product – and they pump it up.
And so, the same people are boosting the entire TOP 10.
This kind of people approached us twice about half a year ago, hundreds of messages were sent to our inbox, we barely managed to fend them off.
The funniest thing is - you open the message, and there it says "we've already started working, see, your votes are coming in. Now, pay us" 🤣
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Videco - AI Personalized Video
Is that and the AI comments. Make us think if it's worth it to launch here and spend so much time engaging
This makes me uneasy and afraid. We plan the launch with care and detail, to thing that all the hard work can be overrun by bots
Vadoo AI
This is concerning. Product Hunt needs to look into this.
Content Quality Score(E-E-A-T)
Is ProductHunt still valuable to launch a product? It sound PH is becoming a bot combating arena.
Replicate
@ericcheng26 The evidence seems overwhelming in this case but it is unfortunate that I don't think Product Hunt really care, there have been many cases of bots and incentivized upvoting but no action is ever taken. I hope you pursue this matter and you will have my full support wherever I can provide it
@ericcheng26 Product Hunt emphasizes that voting is not a game, so they don't disclose their algorithm. I find this disappointing as a big fan of the Product Hunt platform. We need more information
Jobright AI
SocLeads
Evidence are clear. Manipulation with bots is very big problem of Product Hunt
ChatSlide.ai
As an active PH user, and someone who has launched multiple times on PH, I am really concerned about the intrasparency here.
We also had a similar thing happen when we were launching last year. Had to contact the PH support and give them proof that one of the contestants was cheating.
Product Hunt need to look into this, to avoid bots been used as upvotes.
Jobright AI
@jeffry_rowland Totally agree. We definitely don't want to see launching on Product Hunt become a bot battle.
PerceptInsight
How does the cleanup happen? Also if you went down does it mean that even jobwright was a benefactor of bot votes? I am only trying to understand if bots vote randomly as well? That will be worse because then we don't really know how many genuine users exist on ProductHunt and all this effort is sort of wasted.
Jobright AI
@kaushik_mukherjee1 I completely understand what you care about. This is one of the opaque aspects of Product Hunt. It’s quite common for projects to experience vote reductions from PH. Throughout our launch, Jobright adhered to community rules, relying primarily on support from the PH community and our own users. After the ranking ended yesterday, the official team reduced votes for many projects. However, the reduction for Blaze was much less compared to the sudden vote surge seen in the graph, while our project experienced a more significant reduction, which we found incomprehensible.
Additionally, during the final hours of the ranking, the blatant vote manipulation was completely ignored by the officials. After the ranking ended, they arbitrarily adjusted our position without any explanation.
I urge PH to investigate and mitigate the bot situation not just against Blaze, but all the products launched on PH. If the majority of products use bots then PH votes will lose their meaning and credibility.
Jobright AI
@tiancaixinxin that's what we think as well!
Well a lot of humans are also voting for the sake of voting without checking out the product. The whole thing is rigged. People are buying upvotes all the time and making sure it’s spread across the day. In the larger scheme of things how does it make a difference if you’re #1 or #2. Did we get good feedback, did we get customers, those things should matter. Everyone trying to signal using PH is honestly a waste of time.
The timeline and evidence you've shared are very clear. It's crucial for Product Hunt to thoroughly investigate this issue and provide a valid response to ensure that Product Hunt remains a fair platform for everyone.
@ryan_liu24 Exactly!
I am sorry this happened. This isn't right and I do hope PH will take the necessary steps to investigate to ensure this doesn't happen again. Regardless of the outcome, Jobright AI is an amazing tool and I feel deserves the #1 slot.
@melissa_grabiner Thank you so much for your support!!!!