No, I don't want to buy your upvotes
Yesterday, I (finally) launched Velocity Lapse, my time-lapse app for Android, into production on Google Play. As a part of the launch day, I launched on Product Hunt.
Perhaps as a byproduct of getting so many eyeballs on my product and email, I received tons of spammy emails. They ranged from probably genuine requests to malicious to the core. Many of them were soliciting money for “thousands of upvotes” on Product Hunt —something that is against Product Hunt’s policies (for good reason).
I do get spammy emails like that periodically anyway, because that is just part of having an email publicly available. However, it is sad to me just how many people try to capitalize on someone’s product launch by offering paid fake reviews or upvotes.
Upvotes (a vanity metric already for the most part) and reviews are only worth something when they are genuine.
So no, I don’t want to buy your upvotes.