Bots Rigging Votes? Our Difficulties with Product Hunt

Yesterday we launched Jobright AI and reached #1 of the day at the end of the 24-hr competition. Despite our initial success, we were later adjusted to #2. The new #1 seemingly used bots for upvotes, evident from sudden and significant increases within minutes all the day. We would like to share this detailed story and hear your thoughts. Jobright's ranking at the end of the day: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZWEnUZ2uyqo-LiIQ3I9NbB6nEPuO7uC1/view?usp=sharing Our voting trajectory has been consistently smooth and gradually rising, showing a steady increase. Although there was a significant gap between us and our competitor at the beginning, but thanks to our amazing users and community, our votes began to catch up. However, every time we approached or briefly surpassed our competitor, their vote count suddenly spiked by a large number almost instantly, and our competitor’s votes surged at a bot-like speed. Comparing Voting Trends: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hhNuGxETypnIF7BiGZDCOSfKxuobInCJ/view?usp=sharing Here’s a more detailed timeline that we'd love to share: - 0:00AM - 4:00PM: we remained consistently in the #2 position. Although there was a big gap between us and our competitor at the beginning, both our upvote numbers grew steadily. - Around 4:00 PM, our upvote numbers started getting closer to our competitor's, at one point trailing by only 12 upvotes. - Starting from 4 PM until the last few hours, the curve of our competitor's upvotes experienced 3 steep climbs at bot-like speed (50 - 100 upvotes within 1 minute). - During the last few hours, thanks to the support from our friends and user community, we did our best to gather upvotes. However, our competitor continued to receive upvotes at an unusually rapid pace. Our Competitor's 3 Steep Climbs: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M9-tcrWOaL4mcdllIlugXLIFzKIEKJLL/view?usp=sharing Moreover, we noticed that we have more comments than our competitor. Many of our friends and users have shown their support and shared their experiences with the PH community under our post. The Difference in Comment Numbers: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kY1pfk-TypF1JdFdMcLEuV7VADNH0328/view?usp=sharing At 0:00 AM PST on July 17th, after an intense day of competition, even with our competitor using bots for their upvote, we were initially ranked first of the day. However, after Product Hunt performed a cleanup and adjustment of votes for the top products, our competitor became first while we were moved to second place. We deeply appreciate the support from everyone who has stood by us. We trust Product Hunt to be a fair platform that celebrates genuinely creative products, but we believe our competitor’s actions have compromised the fairness of the community. We look forward to hearing your thoughts on this matter.