What unethical practices in product launches have you seen and how do they impact the market?

Yeah, those upvote selling schemes are pretty unethical. Artificially boosting rankings totally skews perceptions and can mislead folks into thinking a mediocre product is great. Definitely impacts the market by making it harder for truly innovative products to stand out and succeed on their own merits. We need more transparency and less gaming of the system IMO.

Totally, seen a bunch of those 'guaranteed upvotes' services on various platforms. Not a fan - feels super shady and ends up making the whole system seem gamed. Wish PH would crack down harder on that stuff to keep things fair for the legit products out there trying to make it!

Yeah, it's pretty shady. I've seen services offering to post your launch on Product Hunt using multiple fake accounts to boost upvotes. And some promise to get you featured as Product of the Day for a hefty fee, even if your product isn't very good. It totally skews things in favor of whoever pays the most rather than the best products. Ultimately I think it erodes trust in the platform and makes it harder for genuinely great new products to get discovered organically.

There is quire a few "Teams" that will sell upvotes for your launch. Try it out: announce a launch and your LinkedIn mailbox will fill up with offers to boost you product.