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Product Hunt sock puppets? ๐Ÿค”

The other day I shared my product on PH and it did ok, breaking my previous Product Hunt record, hooray! All kinds of people were thinking my product is cool. I'm killing it!... Or so I thought.

Product Hunt sock puppets

Hang on a second. There's something off here. Something is slightly weird about all these white dudes in ties voting for my product. ๐Ÿค” I don't want to come across as prejudiced but it is very much not a white-dude-in-a-tie type of product (it's for making weird niche video games).

I am a naturally skeptical person, so I drilled down into their profiles.

Kevin Johnson sock puppet

Ok Kevin, what is going on with you. You have no followers and you're not following anybody. You're into Marketing, Developer Tools, and ... Artificial Intelligence? Hmm. Maybe it's legit. Maybe you really do like those 50 products you have upvoted. I mean you joined back on April 26th, so I'm sure it's fine.

Let's take a look at another White Guy in a Tie โ„ข.

Carlos Anderson sock puppet

Carlos! My friend! It is so good to see you and I'm delighted that you upvoted my product. It's super cool you are into building roguelike videogames pal!

But wait a moment Carlos. You also have no followers. You also are following nobody. You also have 49 upvotes (close to 50), and you also are into Marketing, Developer Tools, and ... Artificial Intelligence? And you also signed up on April 26th? Hmmmmmmmm.

Alright. I must be seeing things. Lets check out a last dude to prove or falsify the hypothesis that something fishy ๐Ÿก is going on here.

Fernando Garcia sock puppet

Et tu Fernando? Mo! ๐Ÿ˜ฑ For reals? You also no follow, 50 upvote, marketing, dev tools, AI, and signed up on April 26th?!?!?

And let's face it, the tie really clinches it. FAkE. No real human being would wear such a tie with that expression on their face.

Folks I think that settles the matter. These are not real people and there is something deeply fishy going on at Product Hunt.

I mean I love upvotes as much as the next person, but I would prefer to get real and valid feedback from the market any day, even if it's negative. Hmmm.

Any idea what's going on?

  1. 14

    This is just someone warming up their bot accounts on other products before they use it on their own down the road. Happens on every website that uses upvotes for ranking things.

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      Even if PH are not creating this fake activity, they have a strong incentive to let it happen because it makes the whole site look more popular than it is, especially if nobody notices or complains.

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      This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

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        This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

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          Thanks for the numbers, very illuminating.

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    most communities (including reddit) have been known to deploy bots to encourage activity

    1. 2

      Citation needed.

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        https://mashable.com/2012/06/19/reddit-built-with-fake-accounts/

        fake account != bots, but serves the same purpose of encouraging activity

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          Thanks for the reference! Much appreciated, will read.

  3. 2

    I guess they are just boosting their numbers, so they can sell their overpriced promo packages.

    There is nothing wrong with Product Hunt, but it's just too overhyped. Post there, do some basic preparation, but apart from checking industry news and generating some SaaS knowledge/ideas for your own products, it's nothing special.

    1. 1

      I reckon PH are well past the point of having to fake interaction in terms of growth, market awareness traffic from genuine people etc.. As others have said, its more likely that someone is warming their own list of bot accounts to use on their own product. 'Seed' votes if you will, as opposed to PH themselves creating the fake interaction.

    2. 1

      And they were asking 10000$ for 3 days newsletter feature. All by showing these fake numbers. Pathetic

  4. 2

    Yeah I noticed that when we started getting subscribers to our upcoming page. A huge amount of them were spam/fake.

    1. 2

      Same here, at least 150 fake subscribers to my Upcoming page since a couple weeks ago

  5. 1

    Its pretty shocking for me too because I am also using the product hunt from many years and never heard about it before as you can see my eyelash curler website here.

  6. 1

    If you search "buy product hunt vote" on fiverr, then you will literally see a bunch of people are selling the "services". So :)

  7. 1

    I don't agree with your fashion assessment at all of the third profile - IMO the expression is a great fit. That's a really really good "bad" tie with "bad" knot that's tied single-slip in a comfortable way and you can tell the top button is not buttoned behind the tie. It screams "comfortable as a professional" without the need for tweed.

    AI+Marketing+Dev Tools = profile/keywords of most of the recent analytics startups I've seen trending here and elsewhere.

    With GPT3 on the horizon the only way we should expect to get "real feedback" going forward is using real customer interviews ala Mom Test.

    1. 1

      lmao top notch tie analysis my friend

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    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

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    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

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      haha good find on douglas

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      This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

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        I had to laugh, on that peopleperhour page, there are reviews of this particular service. One five-star reads "very authentic, great quality for cost". To which the dude replies "thanks". I think Kendrick Lamar said it best: There's levels to it, you and I know.

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          This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

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        Man that's insane. I didn't think of it even once. Given the daily active users of product hunt, I too think from where those tonnes of upvotes are coming.

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          This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

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    This comment was deleted a year ago.

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      removing stuff that is objectively spam rather than promoting stuff thatโ€™s subjectively worthy.

      Had to stop + hat tip you for that zinger @Primer

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        This comment was deleted a year ago.

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