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Product Hunt community is CROWDED with bots / fakes. Proofs included. Action needed [DONE ✅]
There are literally tons of accounts in Community Discussions lately, that I consider as fake, thats why:
1) Their avatars made by ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com — faces look similar: close up blurry quality shots, same head pose and failed details, like glasses on that guy https://www.producthunt.com/@mic...
They didn’t even bothered to remove watermark from one of those https://www.producthunt.com/@gla... (zoom to hair)
2) They have simple similar Bio like «Regulatory Affairs Specialist» or «Finance Professional»
3) Similar «name_surname» generated nicknames
4) They post constantly in discussions, trying to make more followers.
This is obviously a fraud, sent several reports to moderators, but their profiles and AML Watcher project are are still active.
Nicknames of users, that seem to be fake:
@michael_moore21
@access_unlimmited
@duhome_internet1
@business_coaching1
@tischgrill_test
@galaxy_marketing2
@loetstation_test
@bartz_schalk
@yasra_ali
@daniel_ali3
@duhome_internet1
@karlheinz_rausch
@runen_run
@glaxy_marketing
...I believe, there's much more
What do you think about this, guys?
UPDATE: Actions were taken ✅
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@carolmoh bots are used to upvote launches, that pay for it, to make them Product of the day. PH administration often take their action on it, but the volume of machinations is still enormous.
@ffffilipp ooh ok this makes a lot of sense - wasn't sure if they would be interacting also in the discussions but it would be great if there was stricter validations for people who are able to upvote.
@ffffilipp @carolmoh The interact in discussions and comments to mimic user behaviour. In order to not get kicked out when they eventually upvote for money.
@sentry_co I shouldn’t be surprised but I’m still surprised. Wow just wow… Especially when so many people are doing the absolute most on PH to engage and provide value to the community. 🫠
@sentry_co @carolmoh Yeah, when you launch, I'm sure you'll get like 10 emails from these agencies "promising" to put you in the top 5 like I did this morning 😡
I think we need a new product for detecting bot (based on AI of course). Definitely launch it on PH 😁
@dmitchul For sure. But we need to wait for OpenAI to allow LLM's to run in CLI Or as a chrome extension. That way we could make agents that look for bots and auto-report them etc. When LLM's can control our computers, we are all bots. I een have a Mac mini always running. Ready to deploy!
Took profile screenshots in case they decide to change them https://drive.google.com/drive/f...
Also have few unpublished links to be sure that all of them would be cleaned, not only mentioned here.
@ffffilipp There are probably 10-20k bots on producthunt. It's drop in the ocean I am afraid. I do think that with Twitters new restriction on new signups. (you have to pay to sign up to twitter now) this problem will go away. As producthunt requires a twitter account. Unless the bot makers have endless amounts of twitter accounts on hand already.
UPDATE: The administration took action and blocked the project along with the accounts associated with it. It's a small win to PH community ✊🏻 Keep watching
Thank you, you've clearly been really thorough in pulling together this list and it's super helpful to spot others. It's annoying that in a space like PH where it's meant to be a fair space to share innovation and new ideas, it's becoming littered with Bots.
@niamh_mcglade thanks! Yeah, I really love PH for it's atmosphere, and don't want spammers to destroy it.
I launched a product last week and literally like 10 minutes later, an email came to my inbox asking if I would like to purchase their service and be guaranteed that my product would hit top 5.
Spoiler: I didn't purchase the service and my product didn't hit top 5 :D
I don't see a point in chasing down these bots. Remember, its all due to cost of living arbitrage. If we ban bots, there will be people from unheard of countries that will manually create accounts just for upvoting. This is no different than makers paying hunters for some other service such as "consulting" but not for hunting per se.
This is my first week and I knew some people/bots game the system when I looked at top products in each category. It is what it is.
Oh wow! Thats crazy to think about but I have definitely noticed a little bot activity too and i have only been here around 2 weeks
Wow, that's a considerable pool. Sometimes, I wonder about the number of actual people here. 👌
There are bots. They are easy to spot for now. 😅 A week ago there was a #2 on producthunt that had bot makers. like 10 ish of them. To pump the launch. I reported it but I think the producthunt team has given up at this point. The AI swarms are unstoppable. TBH. They should make some linkedin authentication for producthunt to stop this.
LOVO