Like a What’s What of the tech world, Product Hunt recently claimed the throne as both the tastemaker and newsbreaker for interesting and innovative apps, gadgets, and other geek-affine products. It’s only natural, then, that the Reddit-like social sharing platform would take its growing audience into Apple’s App Store, where it could potentially generate immediate purchases among its extensive consumer base. Of course, Product Hunt covers far more than apps, but you can’t deny the impact of a highly trusted and wildly popular review, commenting, recommendation, and reporting system suddenly embedded within the territory it investigates.

All good news, right? Well… as any person with two brain cells to rub together can surmise, this could shift the power balance of the product sharing website from consumer to company. If the Product Hunt app finds itself sitting next to a different app that it’s supposed to be evaluating, who’s to say payola won’t come into play? While new inventions, those who review them, and conflicts of interest make ordinary bedfellows in the tech space, this latest development seems only to reinforce this type of specious and accepted practice. With great power comes limited objectivity, true believers. Read on here.