Why upvotes get removed from a launch

Uneed's ranking is only worth something if the votes behind it are real. So we check, and sometimes we remove votes.

What we look for

Our system flags patterns that don't happen naturally:

• A batch of accounts created the same day, all voting for the same product
• Multiple accounts sharing a single IP address
• Accounts with no activity beyond one upvote
• Sudden spikes that don't match any traffic source

When enough of these stack up on one launch, we investigate.

What happens if your launch is flagged

We email you before doing anything drastic. The message is roughly: our system detected a lot of suspicious accounts upvoting your product today, including multiple accounts created from the same IP address — can you explain?

That's a real question, not a formality. There are legitimate explanations and we accept them:

• Your team, your coworking space or your accelerator all voted from the same office network
• You posted in a community and a wave of new users signed up to vote for you
• A university, a company VPN, or a country where a lot of traffic exits through few IPs

Reply and tell us. If the explanation holds up, the votes stay.

Without a satisfying answer, we stop the launch.

Why your final ranking changed after launch day

This is the most common version of the question, and it isn't a bug.

Your product may genuinely hit #1 live during the day. If we then detect a batch of votes that don't look legitimate and remove them, the ranking is recalculated on what's left — and the final standing can settle at #2 or lower.

The daily archive always reflects the cleaned-up, final standing. That's why it can differ from what you saw in real time. We'd rather have an archive that's accurate than one that's flattering.

Buying votes

Don't. Vote-selling services are the single easiest thing for us to detect, because the accounts they use vote for dozens of unrelated products.

Products caught buying votes lose the votes and the launch. Makers who do it repeatedly get banned from the platform.

If you think we got it wrong

Reply to the email, or write to us with your product URL and what you think happened. We review these by hand. If we removed legitimate votes, we put them back.

The best defence is boring: tell your audience about your launch in advance, and let them arrive over the course of the day from identifiable places. See How to maximize your launch success.