Obligatory link to "How Product Hunt really works": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10739875

That was posted over a year ago; since then, things have gotten even worse with regards to elitism and the fairness of the system (nowadays the name of the game is figuring out how to market your Product Hunt submission to your network of friends without explicitly asking for upvotes, unless you're famous/VC in which case you're allowed to be blatant). My original rant on the topic after the acquisition: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13080432

I've recently given up calling out the voting manipulation on Product Hunt because everyone calls me a buzzkill for doing so.

Keep up the good work.

I had a bad experience:

1. It was invitation-only when I tried to join it. No real complain here, it just didn't make sense for this kind of page and I don't like it.

2. Then a couple of projects of mine got to the front-page of HN and someone -- I am guessing an admin -- added them to Product Hunt with an email I never gave them which resulted in waves of SPAM.

I cannot stress the 2nd point enough. Imagine that you make a project, a random person re-publishes it in some network you were denied entering and now for every person who comments in there you get a low-quality email.

Edit: for clarity I hope

I don't understand I cannot stress [...] enough: someone [...] added them to Product Hunt with an email I never gave them which resulted in waves of SPAM

You do not use filters? Free feedback, straight to your inbox!

As far as I remember the feedback was a lot like cool project!, which is also nice but nothing compared with the previous front-page of HN as it was the same positive sentiment but with a lot of useful comments. About filters I use Gmail, so mostly use the stock ones which are good for bot SPAM, but not for user-generated comments.

Differentiating user-generated comments can be a pain; I would hope ProductHunt sends notification emails from the same source!

Thanks for filling in the additional detail.

don't forget to use a "no hunt" badge or this might happen: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/colormind

I mean, not complaining or anything but I did not expect a beta signup page to get hunted. Didn't find out until three weeks later when I tried to submit the product.

eg. one of these badges https://thenextweb.com/media/2015/02/02/want-get-product-hun...

But i am guessing product hunt does not showcase all products. There is a whole selection process.

well, it DOES list everything (in the 'new today' tab I think). But by default it shows the ranked list of products. In that sense, it works similar to HN where only top Show HNs are displayed in the homepage.

You need someone else to list your first product I think.