Build-in-public is not inherently spam. The problem, argues Forg founder Kumar Kislay in a Product Hunt discussion, is when sharing a product’s journey becomes a repetitive promotion formula—idea announcement, milestone posts, launch, and retrospective—without enough useful learning for readers. His proposed remedy is to earn attention through contributions first and promote launches in context. That is an editorial argument, not a measured finding that platforms have become more spam-heavy or that Forg’s approach has improved its feed.
What Kislay means by build-in-public becoming a spam problem
Kislay’s concern is not that builders should hide their work. He objects to a pattern in which the same product is repeatedly promoted through predictable updates, while the posts offer little beyond the fact that the product exists or has reached another milestone. In his view, this can crowd out the technical insights, honest lessons, and opinions that make a community useful.
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He describes the platform incentive as part of the problem: if a service rewards posting without distinguishing useful contributions from promotion, people may adapt by posting more promotional material. Kislay captures his position with the line, “The algorithm is not a neutral tool. It is a values statement.” That is his framing of platform design, not a finding from an independent study.
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Where promotion ends and useful sharing begins
The distinction in Kislay’s argument is less about whether a post mentions a product and more about what a reader gets from it. A launch announcement can be relevant; a post that explains a difficult decision, a failed attempt, or a lesson another builder can apply gives readers something beyond the announcement itself.
| Editorial lens | More useful to readers | More likely to feel promotional |
|---|---|---|
| Reader value | A specific lesson, technical insight, or explanation of the reasoning behind a decision. | An announcement or milestone with little information beyond the product update. |
| Frequency | An occasional launch update among substantive contributions. | Repetitive milestone posts that keep promoting the same product. |
| Contribution history | Participation that gives readers context for why the builder’s update matters. | Promotion without prior useful participation or context. |
This is an editorial framework drawn from Kislay’s argument, not a validated scoring system. A post can promote a product and still be useful; likewise, calling a post a lesson does not make it valuable if it offers no concrete insight.
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What builders can share instead of another milestone post
Kislay recommends describing what was learned, why a technical choice was difficult, what failed, and what might help other builders. These details make the post useful even to someone who is not yet interested in trying the product. His principle is to “earn reach by contributing value, not by promoting yourself.” It is a recommendation, not a guarantee of audience growth.
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- Share a failure: Describe what did not work and what changed as a result, rather than presenting progress as inevitable.
- Make the lesson portable: Give readers enough context to understand whether the experience applies to their own work.
- Put the launch in context: Explain what is new and who it may help, rather than treating the announcement itself as the contribution.
In a reply, Kislay endorses sharing genuine lessons and mistakes and identifies aggressive, repetitive posting as the problem. His suggestion is to let a launch post follow a record of useful participation, so readers have a reason to care about the update.
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What the related research does—and does not—show
Studies of other settings offer context about repetition and self-promotion, but they do not directly test Kislay’s claim about build-in-public communities or Forg’s feed.
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An American Marketing Association summary of a Journal of Interactive Marketing study describes 14,311,145 Instagram posts from 6,079 influencers across 57 countries. It reports an association between more frequent posting and faster growth, but says volume alone has diminishing returns; repetitive content and frequent advertising are associated with slower growth. Influencer posting data is not direct evidence about builder forums.
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An Academy of Management Proceedings abstract for three preregistered experiments and one archival study involving 685 MBA students reports that professional social networks foster more permissive self-promotion norms than face-to-face settings, while exceeding those norms brings reputational penalties. The population is specific, and those findings do not establish how build-in-public audiences respond.
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Together, these sources make repetition and social norms plausible concerns to consider; they do not prove that platforms have a spam problem or identify an algorithm that can reliably tell genuine learning from content made for reach.
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What Forg says it changed, and what remains unknown
Kislay says Forg shifted its feed to prioritize technical insights, honest lessons, and useful opinions, while leaving room for product launches after a builder has established a presence through contribution. The discussion does not explain how the feed ranks posts, quantify any reduction in spam, or report whether readers found the experience better. The change should therefore be understood as Forg’s stated approach, not a demonstrated outcome.
The question raised in the thread—how platforms can separate genuine learning from posts written only for reach—remains open. A platform can express a preference for contribution, as Forg says it has, without evidence that its systems consistently recognize intent or improve the quality of what readers see.
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