What is a harsh comment (and an annoying trend among all the "I got on Product Hunt: look at me!" posts) is that you encourage vote cheating ("It is perfectly fine, however, to promote your Product Hunt page on your groups, forums, internal communications, etc. Introduce your community to the featuring on ProductHunt, but don’t encourage them to vote one way or another.") because it isn't explicitly against the rules, but you don't realize why that's a bad and unethical thing to do.
I have to disagree with you on this one. This was discussed with the PH team beforehand. We wanted to know exactly what was cool to do, and what wasn't. And we followed their rules very closely.
[Disclaimer : I know Batch's founder, but this comment will try to be very objective]
Allow me to disagree. Product Hunt is a platform that lets users vote for the best products. Asking for upvotes is wrong, because the people you ask feel obligated to do it. When you let people know you're on Product Hunt, they have the choice to go upvote or not. If it's a good product, they will go and upvote it. But this is the essence of Product Hunt. Filter good products and make other users aware of good products.
> But if you are promoting to people who are your friends or are already fans of your product per the original quote, they are not necessarily unbiased and are not necessarily voting on the merit of the product itself.
Their article states :
"It is perfectly fine, however, to promote your Product Hunt page on your groups, forums, internal communications [...] community to the featuring on ProductHunt, but don’t encourage them to vote one way or another."
They are not including "friends" in there. And when it comes to people who are already fans of your product, no - they're not unbiased. But that's the thing : they tried the product, and loved it. Which is exactly how word of mouth works in real life. You try a product, you love it, and you tell you friends about it. And that's the whole point of PH : surfacing great products.
> When you let people know you're on Product Hunt, they have the choice to go upvote or not. If it's a good product, they will go and upvote it.
But if you are promoting to people who are your friends or are already fans of your product per the original quote, they are not necessarily unbiased and are not necessarily voting on the merit of the product itself.
What is a harsh comment (and an annoying trend among all the "I got on Product Hunt: look at me!" posts) is that you encourage vote cheating ("It is perfectly fine, however, to promote your Product Hunt page on your groups, forums, internal communications, etc. Introduce your community to the featuring on ProductHunt, but don’t encourage them to vote one way or another.") because it isn't explicitly against the rules, but you don't realize why that's a bad and unethical thing to do.