Upvote Buying Is Destroying Product Hunt ❌🙅

Stepan Solodnev
16 replies
Hi Product Hunt community! 👋 Today, I noticed suspicious activity around the project Remento (https://www.producthunt.com/posts/remento). Here are the details: 1️⃣ My friends and I received messages from multiple people asking us to Upvote this project and send screenshots to confirm the votes. Here’s an example of one such message: "https://www.producthunt.com/posts/remento Please Upvote and share Ss" 2️⃣ The same people often send similar requests for other projects throughout the week. It seems like they are systematically engaged in this behavior. 3️⃣ On the last day of voting, Remento saw a sudden and unusual spike in Upvotes. This seems suspicious for a few reasons: Normally, the pace of voting slows down towards the end of the week. During weekends, people are usually less active because they’re resting. I’ve also heard of a tactic where votes are artificially inflated during the final hours of voting, exploiting the time when competitors are least active. Such patterns raise concerns about the possibility of vote buying or other manipulative tactics. While I am not accusing anyone, I believe it’s important to bring these facts to light. Why this matters This kind of behavior damages the integrity of Product Hunt. It undermines fair competition, erodes trust in the platform, and detracts from the spirit of building communities and receiving honest feedback. Instead, some teams appear to prioritize manipulation over genuine engagement. I am not here to pass judgment—I am simply sharing observations. If needed, I can provide screenshots of the messages or share the conversations via Telegram. I encourage the Product Hunt team to investigate this issue to ensure fairness and maintain trust in the platform. Let’s make sure the best projects succeed on merit, not through dishonest practices. What do you think, community? Let’s discuss! 🙌

Replies

Ben Syverson
I just launched on Saturday, and more than 20 people reached out via LinkedIn and email to sell upvotes. One seller offered 400 upvotes for $100, with guaranteed #1/Product of the Day placement. (The most sophisticated sellers offer performance guarantees.) When it's so cheap to guarantee #1, people WILL buy votes. Personally I did not buy any upvotes, but looking at the graphs of other Products in my daily cohort in the dashboard, it's extremely obvious who did. There's no reason to name & shame, but yeah, that's the reality.
Aleksandr Sabri
Sugar Free: Food Scanner
Sugar Free: Food Scanner
Congratulations on your win! However, I'd like to point out a more fundamental issue with Product Hunt. While we're discussing fair competition and voting practices, let's examine the platform's core selection system: only hand-picked projects can make it to the listing through an extremely opaque moderation process. The project selection criteria remain a mystery, with decisions often relying on the subjective opinion of a single reviewer. In such a system, discussions about "fair voting" seem somewhat naive - the platform itself creates an uneven playing field from the start. Perhaps we should broaden this discussion beyond vote manipulation to address the need for transparent, clear criteria for project listings on Product Hunt. This would be a more effective step toward making the platform truly equitable for all developers. After all, how can we talk about fair competition when the ability to compete itself is restricted to a select few through an unclear selection process?
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Stepan Solodnev
@userio_neimio Thanks for joining the discussion and for the congratulations. I agree with you, this is an important point. I wrote a post on this topic too:) https://www.producthunt.com/disc...
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Aleks Bykhun
Found the guys who are doing this as a business. // SHAME: https://socialgrowthlabs.co/ NOT AN AD // I love new products, and I would always try 5-10 new apps per month, but DAMN I hate this new style of spam. ProductHunt should be about spreading excitement, not "cheap CAC launch strategy".
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Artyom  Zhuravlev
I fully support my co-founder. We have put in a lot of effort into this launch, and it’s disheartening to see this situation. Typically, the graph resembles a saturation curve rather than showing a spike at the end. I hope that Product Hunt will investigate this matter.
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Charles Greene
Hey @solodnev (author) and @artyom_zhuravlev (first comment) - haven't had a chance to say congrats on your win on Monday yet. Big fan of what you two are building with Remy AI and excited that we're competing head-to-head for Product of the Week! You're absolutely right about Remento - we've had a huge spike in votes in the last 48 hours through the weekend! That's because we never thought we'd be in the running for POTW. When we realized that we had a shot after winning POTW, we did a big email out to all of our customers letting them know we were in the running, and also posted several times on LinkedIn throughout the weekend (including Sunday AM), as has our globally dispersed team (Brazil, Philippines, Pakistan). We were always asking for support, and the response has been really humbling. However, as I'm sure was the case for you, I personally received hundreds of messages from people who were advertising the services you speak of. Many claimed to have already done some outreach on our behalf - we ignored all of these. I couldn't agree more - they're absolutely antithetical to the spirit that is Product Hunt. Excited to see who wins! You've built a really wonderful product and I'm excited to use it myself. P.S. Thanks for reaching out to our team in the days leading up to your launch asking if we'd upvote you and share your launch with other folks too. It gave us a good heads up that we'd be competing with folks definitely planning to take this seriously :-)
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Stepan Solodnev
@charlie_g1 Thank you for your congratulations and kind words! Sincerely, I like your product too. It's a great idea! You wrote this letter amazingly! Seriously, I love it. It does sound like a plausible story. Normally, I would be confused and at a loss. If it weren't for one thing: why did one of the people receive such a letter from you? "Hello! - I was given your info give your expertise with helping companies win on product hunt. Our company Remento is 350 votes away from Product of the Week. Any chance you have availability to help us close the gap in the next 36 hours and win?" It's very strange to give so many details to a person if you just want "support". The exact number of votes (350) and the 36-hour deadline look like a great brief for the contractor. But not for an ordinary member of the Product Hunt community Screenshots are easily faked, so we made a screen recording. You can watch it here https://youtu.be/0OrKQUgjkHQ 🍿 P.S. We could ask for support and feedback, but not a vote.
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Stepan Solodnev
But if we talk about the product: I really like the idea behind this—it’s such a meaningful gift, especially for the older generation. Preserving their stories and voices feels like a wonderful way to create something personal and lasting for the whole family. I sincerely wish the product great success!
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Yuki Eliot
@solodnev i agree with you! lets connect please. thanks
Paul Hill
Completely agree, the lack of transparency around which projects get listed is a huge problem. It's basically impossible to get on PH now unless you have connections or pay for upvotes, which defeats the whole purpose. They need clear, public criteria for what qualifies to be listed. Otherwise it's not a level playing field at all, and shady tactics like vote buying will just keep proliferating. PH is losing credibility fast - they need to open up the process or risk becoming irrelevant. 👎
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Ben Griese
@paulhill8 Hey Paul, we have our Featuring Guidelines that is publicly available: https://help.producthunt.com/en/...
Daniel Joseph Bennett
Sadly it's an open secret that vote manipulation runs rampant on PH. 😕 I'd guess a huge % of featured products got there thru purchased votes. Wish PH would crack down harder but I get that it's an arms race vs increasingly sophisticated vote sellers. In the meantime, focus on building something great & don't get caught up in vanity metrics! Real users matter most. 💪
Daniel Harrison
100% agree with you on the core issue. I've noticed the same lack of transparency and fairness when it comes to which projects even get listed in the first place. It seems like who you know matters more than the quality of your product. I wonder if an AI system could help make the selection process more objective and merit-based? In any case, you're spot on that discussions of fair voting ring hollow when most devs don't even get a chance to compete. PH should absolutely clarify and open up their listing criteria if they want to be seen as an equal playing field.
Ben Griese
@danielharrison Hey Daniel! We have our publicly available Featuring Guidelines where you can learn more about how we decide what's on the top of the homepage: https://help.producthunt.com/en/...
Giancarlo Rosa
I received a message on LinkedIn from a PM at Remento saying that they were going for Product of the Week. Did not reply. Received a follow-up on Friday asking if I upvoted, again did not reply. Received another message yesterday asking if I could upvote. Have not replied to any message.
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Giancarlo Rosa
Funnily enough, that same user no longer has Remento on their LinkedIn profile and is now working for a Lead Generation company. @solodnev @artyom_zhuravlev
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