PSA: If your product is using Airtable, you will get shadow banned on Product Hunt
So turns out that Product Hunt shadow-banned my launch today.
They have a rule that "Lists / Directories" are not allowed but TIL this really just means products using Airtable are not allowed ¯\(ツ)/¯
Uhm... that actually makes no sense.
Banning "Lists / Directories"? Strange rule but okay.
Banning "low effort" projects? Sure makes sense.
But they seem to do neither. You can submit any low quality list or directory as long as you're not using Airtable.
Just because someone is using Airtable to deliver value doesn't say anything about the effort that went into the project.
Instead this rule clearly favors projects with a "shiny" frontend regardless of how much substance there is to them.
Also it seems rather strange to justify any rule like this by refering to "community feedback".
After all, the whole site runs on community feedback. When the community likes a project it rises to the top. If not, it doesn't.
That's the whole point of the site.
Just a few days ago Matthias made a similar discovery.
I also remember a few fellow indie makers discussing this a few months ago.
Weird.. Would that include only airtable tables protected by a paywall or even tools built with Softr (that use airtable as a backend?)
Softr sites seem to be allowed.