Hardwiring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to incentives can lead to failure of the KPI. For a lot of people 500 dollars is simply a lot of money. Say you miss one like to win 500 dollars; you would be very tempted to fake it. Hackaday could easily sniff out a lot of these fake likes by looking for repetitive patterns in the generated data.

If you really want to blow your mind, trying clicking through to the users that liked the project on them.  

There are projects with 150+ Likes, but if you take a look at who Liked it, there are only 30 listed users.  

Too easy: Go to the "Sign Up" page, enter a fake email (no verification), a password, click on the "Sign Up" button. Enter a Username and a random Summary. Click on "Save your Profile" button. Select at least 1 interest and click on the "Complete my profile" button. Search for the project you want and click on the "Like" button.

It doesn't even require a bot, it just take < 1 minute. I recommend using a name generator so you don't even need to think.

I could get my project to reach $500 in less than half an hour, but I won't.

I just hope the admin would be able to detect these scams and remove them (people who spent less than 2 minutes total on HaD?).

Hi Squonk42

We are one of the projects that got a lot of likes during the last few days. 

The reason for that is we have been working on our project for years and have built pretty good following of people who like our project and support it on Facebook and YouTube. 

Once we asked to support our project on Hackaday, many of our followers did. 

For example, my YouTube video that I posted yesterday, where I tell about participating in Hackaday contest and ask to vote for our project has received more than 800 views in 12 hours: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRCchh4-F4E

We also have participated at Maker Faire Bay Area two weeks ago, where we got huge interest from many people, who signed up to our newsletter and I guess also voted for us, when we sent an email about our participation at Hackaday contest.

As far as I know, there are no rules that people who are not constant Hackaday users and don't follow many projects should not vote for a project they like. The mere fact of getting many likes in a few days doesn't mean any scam. 

I don't say this is the case for all the projects, it is a competition after all!

But just check by yourself: there are projects with just a single trivial file and about 6 pages of simplistic logs that did it. It is pretty easy to call the whole school to vote for you, although not fair. https://hackaday.io/contest/164621-supplyframe-designlab-2019-hackaday-prize/discussion-126046

Worse, one can create ghost accounts too, apparently. Easy to spot: a nickname with a numbered suffix, no picture, no location, no bio, following just this single project, with a profile created just a few days ago. Given you only need 163 likes, I wonder if it is worth creating a bot for that, or if you can do it manually.

I know $500 does not sound the same everywhere in the world, but it is still pitiful.

OTOH, there are some real projects that don't get the attention they deserve because of this and won't get any money.

The #FunKey project - All your games on your keychain !  has 37 seven files, including design files in KiCAD format, PDF datasheets (including non publicly available ones until now), STEP files for electronic parts and STL files on Thingiverse (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3574918).

Also included is the list of the 44 electronic components, and a series of 19 logs on the electronic and mechanical design (software design to come soon!).

What else do you need?

Possibly related is that when I first signed up for an account a couple weeks ago, I was already following like 30 people. I thought maybe this site just chooses some people based on the interests you list when you sign up. I unfollowed them all.

But then a couple days ago I was suddenly following 28 people again. I looked more closely this time and some of them were relatively new accounts with tens of thousands of followers. I unfollowed them all again, and changed my password this time. No more problems yet, but I'll keep my eye on it.

No spontaneous project following/liking, though.

I just checked. I'm apparently following many people I I don't recall adding to my following list. Did the HaD.io bot decide I needed more friends?