I’ve been watching Product Hunt for years, and while it’s still may be an important place for makers, something fundamental is breaking.
More and more founders report the same pattern:
• Large, real communities show up to support a launch
• Only a small fraction of the engagement is counted
• Comments from real users disappear or get filtered
• Weighted votes and opaque algorithms decide outcomes
• Makers are told “it’s working as intended,” but nobody understands how or why
The platform slowly losing the one thing that made it special: an honest signal of what the community actually cares about.
The fact: Yesterday our product (3,600 followers and around 100 reviews) brought around 4,000 real users to Product Hunt. We received over 150 genuine comments, added 600 new followers, and the system decided this was worth only ~340 points and a 4th-place ranking. If you read the comments, it’s clear how much love and support our community showed. We are one of the most commented products of the entire month. What’s even more discouraging is how many community members told us they wrote comments and reviews — yet cannot see them displayed publicly.
We spent a whole day here and encouraged our users to show up. Some wrote thoughtful reviews and posts — and some of these contributions simply never appeared. That’s a huge disappointment for people who took the time to register, explore the site, and support a product they care about. These are thoughtful people working in universities, governments, big and small companies, entrepreneurs — all new to this platform. And instead of being welcomed, many of them feel ignored or silenced.
Clearly something is off. And it’s not just about us – it’s about anyone who believes community should matter. The purpose of the algorithm should be to surface the best products. Right now, it clearly isn’t doing that.
A product can rank higher on Product Hunt with far fewer real users and quality, simply because its voters are long-time PH accounts that the algorithm trusts more. Meanwhile, thousands of real people from an external community get discounted because they are new to PH. The result is that the scoreboard rewards PH insiders rather than the products with the strongest real-world support. That’s not discovery — it’s an algorithmic bias disguised as fairness.
There are entire services selling “aged” Product Hunt accounts and upvotes. These carefully managed pseudo-accounts look exactly like what the algorithm considers high quality, while real first-time supporters from real communities are treated as suspicious. It no longer feels like “from makers to makers” — it feels like “from bots for bots.” The system trusts the shape of an account more than the human behind it.
And honestly, it’s starting to resemble what happened to Dribbble — when the community drifted from real creators to an inward-facing loop of insiders validating each other rather than serving real audiences. That’s when a platform stops being about discovery and becomes about signaling.
Startups succeed when communities show up authentically – not when an algorithm quietly decides which humans count.
This is a call for transparency, not blame. Product Hunt can still be a home for makers, but only if the community can trust how rankings are determined.
Our community is asking a simple question: why should we come back here next time? We brought more people to Product Hunt than we got from Product Hunt. What’s the point of participating?
And then there is the support experience. I spent hours writing and sending personal emails to bring people here without any automations. And when I wrote to support asking why comments and reviews from real people were disappearing, I received a generic, bot-like answer. And I still don’t have a real answer. Is this really what makers deserve on this website?
That combination of heavy filtering and zero clarity is a terrible signal for people who invest real time, effort, and trust. I feel frustrated and disappointed. And I know many other founders can relate.
There’s a bitter irony in all of this. We’re building a product based on principles that deliberately limit our control over users. And yet, this exact situation is what we’re trying to avoid: a small group deciding what’s real and what isn’t. In the era of AI, that kind of power is more dangerous than ever. You can lose access to your account and end up arguing with a support bot, trying to prove you have rights. But do you?