Our experience of launching on PH and hassle with bots 🤖
Ksusha
17 replies
Two weeks ago we launched Aaply and got #1 startup of the day, but not immediately 😄 During the launch day, we noticed that our competitors use bot fam. That’s why decided to text about that experience and describe how we found out that and what we did.
1/ You can track upvotes statistics on Product Wars 2. There’s a graph with top launches of a day, updated in real-life time.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/obta35hzio913k9/twitter_Fo_mJouWYAEk-pu.png?raw=1
2/ If you follow the graph closely, you can notice sharp jumps and drops in votes. It can be either live upvotes either bots.
3/ Product Hunt has automatic services that track bots and remove their votes.
4/ So if you see on the graph that some product is losing votes and the graph line is falling, this means that Product Hunt automatically removed some bots.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/74738luva4uy7yy/twitter_Fo_qaRQXoAAtupV.png?raw=1
5/ One of the indicators of the bot’s comments is that they have serial numbers instead of names and empty accounts, no avatars or information.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ictupb2dv40v5nw/twitter_Fo_sbsXX0AEg2rR.png?raw=1
6/ Also you can check competitors' Twitter accounts for bots. Products use it on Twitter to retweet launching posts to show a big amount of shares.
7/ There are services where you can buy bots for the price starting from $50.
8/ The goal of using the bots is to reach the TOP quickly in the first hour of voting. And stay there to take all the organic reach and attention of the audience. Even if they remove it later, the product still gets its attention.
9/ There are times when PH deletes bots during the launch or before the end of the voting. Also, it happens even after the announcement of the results.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ciqxmo6b40h3ab4/image%20%282%29.png?raw=1
So it happened to us. On the day of the launch, we noticed that competitors were using bots and we notified the support about this issue. That day we got the third product of the day. But week later PH removed about 500-400 votes from those who took first and second place with us on the same day. We lost 6 votes as well, but stayed the third.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qjb6dt88fxzmam1/pika-1677507112932-1x.jpeg?raw=1
And now, two weeks later, Product Hunt updated the information and we got #1 startup of the day finally 😌
https://www.dropbox.com/s/echpuy9tj5u8ybq/pika-1677509479681-1x.jpeg?raw=1
Thats's life and competition, but never give up 🍀 We hope that our information will help you, and your launch will be fair, friends.
Replies
Paul Mit@mituhin
FlowMapp
Thanks @product_at_producthunt for hearing us! I believe that It is very hard to detect all bots/fakes/fraud, but hope anti-spam system will continue its development!
Share
@product_at_producthunt that mean that all community should help PH Support to detect this harmful behavior.
Product Hunt
@mituhin Thank you again for bringing it to our attention. We want to make sure that folks get a fair shot when they launch on Product Hunt. We are adding some new fraud detection tools for our Product Ops team, but soon enough we will automate some of these models to make sure we're catching fraud before it can give an organic advantage.
@product_at_producthunt Thank you so much! I think it's super important to the whole community and that's what brings justice back.
If you need our help, we're always here for you!
Saving this for when I finally launch something on PH! 🙏🏻
Sequoia: Men's Sexual Wellness
Congratulations Paul, on getting justice!
who raised?
Thanks for sharing!
I already read your thread on Twitter, I want to add my experience:
Few minutes after the launch of Carbone, I noticed the extensive use of bots for comments/votes and I directly understood the same as you mentioned "The goal of using the bots is to reach the TOP quickly in the first hour of voting. And stay there to take all the organic reach and attention of the audience. Even if they remove it later, the product still gets its attention."
Following that, I asked myself, "What is the point of launching on PH if it is a paid advertisement platform instead of celebrating creations and makers all together?"
I wanted a clear answer to the situation, and I got a call pretty quickly from @cristinaibunea through their new "Community Hours Feedback".
The engineering team of PH is working on clearing all those bots, and they want to re-enforce by verifying accounts and limiting the API usage. In the meantime, they know who uses paid bots extensively and get warned.
To improve transparency, I brought up the idea of making public the total number of bots removed per post, the problem is: even if you did not pay bots, you might have received an upvote or comment from a bot. They are upvoting every post to look "real".
Ultimately, the PH team is doing their best to reward organic launches, and it will be improved for sure :)
Michael Silber mentioned on Twitter "We know it can be frustrating when it appears someone else might be cheating on their launch. We're cooking up some new tools to fight fraud. We hope you'll put your trust in our team to address this. Can't wait to see your next launch!" @product_at_producthunt
@cristinaibunea feel free to correct me if I missed something
Thank you for sharing your analysis and experience with everyone @ksusha_golovchenko , Cheers 🍻
AppstoreSpy
@cristinaibunea @product_at_producthunt @steevep
Wow! Thank you for such a deployed answer.
First time we felt unfair too and didnt understand why it works that way. But now we see that PH really works with that problem and tries to do everything to solve. The other way startupers wont launch here.
That's so cool that even in two weeks they finally gave us #1 product of the day, inspires faith in justice and honesty 🦾
@cristinaibunea @product_at_producthunt @ksusha_golovchenko @steevep Steeve, thanks for the comment and sharing this, I fully agree with you.
TheSprkl
Wow! thanks for sharing this! Honestly I do not understand those who use bots, for me it's more important to get the real community of experts who is interested in my product. And reputation is more important than extra votes or smth like that..
So again, thank you for sharing this information and let people know about such cases and how "real" can be the ranks
AppstoreSpy
@oxana_ivanova I totally agree with you! Thank you for the answer 💛
Ad Roast
Thanks for sharing something so detailed. I also think bots are a waste of time and money, but I guess the #1 spot can be alluring enough to shell some cash out for it (for some).
Happy they cleared up the issue and you got your spot! Congrats!!
AppstoreSpy
@carter_barnett yeah, everyone want to be the first 😁thank you!