Was Product Hunt ever taken seriously by anyone? Since day1 it was an obvious target for influence hacking

In some domains a big Product Hunt launch was a serious achievement. VCs would look at it, journalists would take notice, and you’d get a little burst of signups from a user base known to have a lot of influencers.

Everyone knew it was gamed a little, but there was some organic traffic.

Then it steadily got worse and worse until the front page was just random products that nobody actually used.