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17 Comments

Is IH becoming too spam-y?

While there are definitely amazing posts still being published here every day, I've been feeling like IndieHackers has recently become a place for self-promotion and spam.

I get it, we are all here to make money. But please treat this as a forum for discussion, not marketing. Ask where you can post your stupid course product, don't pitch it here.

Honestly, if you've proven yourself to be a valuable member of the community, I'd make an exception. But not to the accounts that were created a week ago.

I've been around here for over a year, and for the past month or so it seems to be getting worse and worse. Almost to the point where I'm hesitant to click on that IH bookmark because I'm tired of the spam.

  1. 11

    I'm trying to automate and delegate as much of the spam-fighting process as possible. As of a couple days ago, reporting should go a long way, especially reporting spam posts made by newer accounts. And especially if multiple people report a post.

    I'm thinking about doing something akin to "hidden moderators," too, where people who consistently make good reports will have their reports weighted more highly.

    1. 3

      That's a clever idea! Keep up the good work.

    2. 1

      I'm seeing a major difference already! Nice work!

    3. 1

      Thank you for doing the work!

  2. 11

    I think it started getting worse when Rosie Sherry left - I'm not sure there's anybody responding to the spam reports any more.

    I report probably 20-30 obvious spam messages every day, but there are so many more that are lowering the quality of the site.

    There's a big movement of "Roast my landing page" posts that are just spam, then on top of that the naked self-promotion.

    I don't report those, as I'm not sure where IH wants to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable...

    But, yeah, I'm finding less and less value here every day.

    1. 3

      Don't want to just complain, so @csallen, if you're looking for a new moderator, I'm willing to help!

    2. 1

      I don't report those, as I'm not sure where IH wants to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable...

      One hundred percent. I find recurring threads (like the Roast my landing page ones') somewhat annoying, but wouldn't mark that as spam.

  3. 9

    I definitely agree. I used to read indie hackers every single day. I would read it in the morning and at night. I wouldn’t miss a single post.

    Now, everything feels really spammy and not community focused anymore. A friend just sent me this post or I would have never seen this at all!

  4. 5

    It has seemed more spam laden recently. Also just more empty. I don’t visit as often as I used to because there seems to be less real human interaction to be had here.

  5. 3

    I so feel you there. Definitely more and more spam. What are some of the other communities/sites you get startup content from? Or relating to this niche. Personally I find great content from creators on substack and medium articles.

    1. 1

      substack and medium articles.

      definitely. The problem with that is one-sided information flow. There is no discussion on newsletters and articles (comments, but it's not the same)

      were do you go to ask the questions?

  6. 3

    Same thing for Product Hunt, ratings are being traded/sold, they lost their signification completely. Follow me, I follow you. This is not how it's meant to be.

  7. 2

    There is no modding on IH, right?

    1. 2

      It doesn't scale. Reporting a single post requires a few clicks and Indie Hackers is generally a slow site.

      1. 1

        I report spam all the time - check out Landing pages feedback group! CLEAN!

        1. 3

          Yes, I used to report lots of spam too.

          But, as I noted, it doesn't scale as it requires too many clicks and actions on a slow website. At some point I had to decide whether I wanted to spend my time here reading and engaging with content or flagging spam.

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