[ChangeLog] January 26, 2023 release notes: my products, self-service ads, comment prompts

I am probably in the minority at this point but... for the small percentage of us who hunt products that for whatever reason are very useful or cool that we didn't make ourselves, the platform feels more and more created not for discovery but for self-promotion almost exclusively. Self-promotion isn't a bad thing, since if you can't promote your own product it says a lot about the readiness of your product, but I think out of mere politeness it makes constructive critiques more difficult. Nobody wants to crash someone else's wedding and all. And for the most part, the products posted here aren't necessarily problematic, so for the most part on that front the language involved in the ancient practice of hunting someone else's product could be made clearer (like I have no right to determine whether the press is allowed to showcase a product that I didn't make and that question alone last night took me 3 hours of consulting, somewhat ironically, the product I hunted before determining the answer). I'm generally a jack-of-many-trades type but I did go to school and have a terminal degree and in a few very specific areas I actually have experience and expertise which is why it took me that long to make the all. But I generally am not worried about PH since you guys have been around and certainly have access to counsel who are more competent than me in this area (I've long joked that I've gotten people out of murder charges and ICE detention but somehow I couldn't even get a permit from the city of NY to turn my friend's bar into a venue that allows for private party guests to legally dance on the tables and the bar for one night, true story). On that front, perhaps some more guidance and perhaps language that's less focused on product launches would really help and even attract a greater variety of products. The site is, after all, called Producthunt, not ProductPromote or whatever and hunting products remains a real problem out there. I have a ton of RSS feeds going just on Github just to keep abreast of new and interesting repos. And HN, and Reddit, and Twitter. At one point I could get by with just Github and HN after checking the RSS feed of this site but as increasingly it's reversed now and that makes me sad, because I do find some really cool an useful stuff here, but far fewer than before. I'm happy to sponsor Github repos if I find it worthwhile and while I prefer open source and self-hosted solutions, I'm happy to pay money, and sometimes more than just the token dollar or two but year long or even "lifetime" subscriptions on products if I think it's worthwhile. I very much believe in supporting independent developers who are willing to put in time and effort to create innovative solutions or even just products that made me laugh out loud IRL. If you can get my long term cohabiting partner in the other room to come to investigate my random burst of laughter I'm definitely sending you money. The last 3 years have been tough for me (COVID here got controlled right when all hell broke loose in China and guess who's the one who doesn't have to go to an office to make money and is vaxxed fully? Yeah, this guy. Oh, and you guys aren't blocked by the GFW, thankfully, because even gmail is blocked.) All that I appreciate very much because getting stuck in a hotel room when you don't have COVID and where the wifi is public and monitored and VPNs are illegal can get boring. But realistically, not every product is going to be good, or even competently made, or launched after consulting a lawyer to ensure that it doesn't violate some unexpected but consequential regulation or law. But that's the exact sort of thing that can tank a product and no amount of backslapping is going to prevent potential issues down the line. Nobody likes to be told that their idea has some sort of oversight or inherent problem that they didn't notice, but that does happen. I've tried to, without actually giving legal advice, to describe generally the problems that are blatantly obvious on some of the products, but if a random visitor to your page whose expertise isn't even in product liability or really anything relating to civil law outside of some very specific aspects of IP and a very niche area of administrative law can spot an issue just by the description and the site, that would absolutely be the number one priority that I'd hire an attorney for ASAP. I don't give legal advice because a ton of reasons, and I realize that raining on your parade doesn't endear me to anyone, but I've been in the community long enough that expressing genuine concerns, something that I'm seeing less and less, in a situation where any faults may be remedied, will definitely beat having to respond to a demand letter that you are unlikely to be able to judge whether it has merit or not. This goes for other critiques as well, just as part of due diligence. If a product is genuinely awesome, I'll definitely leave a comment saying that. But if I see something problematic, I mean I've pissed off the governments of both China and the US pretty much at the same time and I straight up sued Paypal and have counter-DMCA-noticed shoddy legal work from the likes of the NY Times to unscrupulous law firms AND sent letters directly critiquing their lack of due diligence, daring them to bring me to federal court, so feel free to critique my critiques and if there's merit, I'm happy to to address them and even admit fault when the mistake is on my part. The problem i that I see so few of those types of critiques that it's becoming impossible to figure out how much of the praise is generic praise and how much of the critique are made in good faith. I would really like to see more actual discussion of individual products and less generic congratulatory messages that I have to ignore because they tell me nothing. And the platform should really encourage that on a regular basis or, ideally, keep it as a part of the site's ethos. The first amendment doesn't apply since you're not a state entity and moderation is within your right. It would sadden me greatly to see this site decline into a series of generic congratulatory messages without substance. As usual, I wrote a lot more than I intended to at first, my bad. I hope someone reads this, but I won't be offended otherwise. I have no stake in the site obviously, I don't even technically work in tech (I work WITH tech is more accurate), but I've. found a lot of great tools here, some of which I use every day still, and would love to see this continue. I know there are competing sites but I'm here more often not out of nostalgia but because it's been more reliable to find the diamond in the rough, second only to Github (which has its own problems like way too many choices). I'm just hoping for a bit more balance, you know?

Great!!

🔥🔥 Are there plans to add direct messaging in a future update?