Google Deletes Nearly 100,000 Negative Reviews of Robinhood App (theverge.com) 204
According to The Verge, Google has removed nearly 100,000 negative reviews of the Robinhood app from the Google Play Store. From the report: After some disgruntled Robinhood users organized campaigns to give the app a one-star review on Google's Play Store and Apple's App Store -- and succeeded in review-bombing it all the way down to a one-star rating -- the company has now deleted enough reviews to bring it back up to nearly four stars. Robinhood came under intense scrutiny on Thursday, after the stock trading app announced it would block purchases of GameStop, AMC, and other stocks made popular by the r/WallStreetBets subreddit, and some users have already replaced their deleted one-star reviews with new ones to make their anger heard.
It's not outside Google's purview to delete these posts. Google's policies explicitly prohibit reviews intended to manipulate an app's rating, and the company says it has a system that "combines human intelligence with machine learning to detect and enforce policy violations in ratings and reviews." Google says it specifically took action on reviews that it felt confident violated those policies, the company tells The Verge. Google says companies do not have the ability to delete reviews themselves. On Apple's App Store, Robinhood has a 4.7 rating, and we didn't see any reviews newer than Wednesday.
It's not outside Google's purview to delete these posts. Google's policies explicitly prohibit reviews intended to manipulate an app's rating, and the company says it has a system that "combines human intelligence with machine learning to detect and enforce policy violations in ratings and reviews." Google says it specifically took action on reviews that it felt confident violated those policies, the company tells The Verge. Google says companies do not have the ability to delete reviews themselves. On Apple's App Store, Robinhood has a 4.7 rating, and we didn't see any reviews newer than Wednesday.
trust (Score:5, Insightful)
Good to know that app store reviews are so well manipulated. What is the point of a walled garden that you don't trust?
Re:trust (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:trust (Score:5, Insightful)
For some reason, people thing coordinated buying of a stock is manipulation (no, it is not). What is manipulation is these brokerages limiting a segment of investors from increasing the price further, resulting in the price being artificially held lower (to save some hedge funds that shorted it). In a just world, they would be arrested and tried for market manipulation. The assuaging words of these CEOs does nothing to address the critical issue, you upset the system, it overrides you. Kind of reminds me of the last election.
Re:trust (Score:5, Informative)
Thats the problem now. Our infrastructure is flat-out broken. A handful of organizations now control what you can do and what you can say online and on your devices (Apple, I am looking at you). Those reviews were legitimate. 100,000 people were upset with Robinhood, and spoke their minds. Google chose to ignore them and decided what Robinhood did was correct, even when we collectively disagreed with it vocally.
A couple years back, Rotten Tomatoes started doing it with movie reviews. Some Disney films were highly rated by the critics for the obvious reasons, like wanting access to Disney products, but the general fans hated the films. So RT messed with the ratings. Some of the films in the end, didn't make near the money expected. But the bigger damage was to Rotten Tomatoes and other reviewing sites. This largely includes the Play Store as well.
Singling out Apple - is kinda strange - do you have the cites on their involvement in this review mess?
Re: (Score:3)
A couple years back, Rotten Tomatoes started doing it with movie reviews.
I never understood this strategy. RT's whole business model was based around trust and independence, and they decided to throw that in the bin for some brownie points with the studios. RT's name is now trash and can never come back from that.
Re:trust (Score:5, Informative)
Their business model WAS to offer honest reviews--up until they got an audience. Now their business model largely includes shilling for companies. That's their monetization model.
Re:trust (Score:4, Informative)
You do know Rotten Tomatoes is owned by Warner Bros.?
Re:trust (Score:4, Interesting)
RT only started adjusting the way they rate movies when 4chan started review bombing it. Same with Google, review bombing is against the ToS and makes the app's rating unreliable.
Come on, do you think 100,000 users left reviews since Wednesday? Of course not, someone paid to have the app review bombed by a review farm and Google bulk deleted their spam.
To be clear I'm saying that the app's rating should reflect the opinion of the majority of users, not the one or two who can afford to pay to have it bombed, or the minority of pissed off Reddit users.
Re:trust (Score:5, Insightful)
"Come on, do you think 100,000 users left reviews since Wednesday?"
Do you know how many people are on the hype train now? Do you know how many wanted to buy in and couldn't?
Reviews are inherently biased negatively - a satisfied user will usually go about their way, a dissatisfied one will leave a negative review. In this case Robinhood made millions of people very dissatisfied.
With stuff like Rottentomatoes, a movie will get review-bombed by a couple Internet fora with a couple thousand users each. Here we have thing in all news channels, loud in all media worldwide. If one person in a thousand, of those who heard of it got curious and decided to buy $10 worth of shares just to have something to tell children about, and 10% of them found out they can't and left a 1-star review, you still have more than 100,000 genuine reviews.
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RT only started adjusting the way they rate movies when 4chan started review bombing it. Same with Google, review bombing is against the ToS and makes the app's rating unreliable.
Come on, do you think 100,000 users left reviews since Wednesday? Of course not, someone paid to have the app review bombed by a review farm and Google bulk deleted their spam.
To be clear I'm saying that the app's rating should reflect the opinion of the majority of users, not the one or two who can afford to pay to have it bombed, or the minority of pissed off Reddit users.
A lot of people use Robinhood, a lot of people were prevented from using it for what it is used to do. So the software was more or less bricked for them.
I can believe that 100 thousand people who used Robinhood were frustrated.
But let's assume that you are correct, and this is a botfarm. It still means that Google and it's review system are to be given zero trust. Because if non-users non-humans can review, then reviews mean nothing.
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To be clear I'm saying that the app's rating should reflect the opinion of the majority of users, not the one or two who can afford to pay to have it bombed, or the minority of pissed off Reddit users.
I'd be willing to bet the current opinion of the majority of users is much lower than the minimum rating of one star.
Re:trust (Score:5, Informative)
/r/wallstreetbets has (at time of writing) over 6 million subscribers.
100,000 is only ~1.5% of that. Not hard to believe at all, why do you find that so implausible?
There's certainly an argument to be made that it qualifies as "coordinated effort to manipulate an app's rating", but I don't know why you would assume that it must be a bot farm.
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If anything the lack of negative reviews on bad, broken, and malicious apps are unrealistically low. I've seen this with apps that simply don't work anymore having 4 star ratings, and apps that abuse permissions they don't need maintaining a lofty rating from years ago.
Do you really think it's legitimate for an app which has majority 1 star ratings over the last two years to have a 3.5 average because it didn't used to be abusive? https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]
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Re:trust (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny how you think in a "just world" the hedge funds should be arrested and tried for market manipulation. Seems a bit cock-eyed, aren't the redditors doing exactly the same thing?
Reading comprehension is important:
What is manipulation is these brokerages limiting a segment of investors from increasing the price further, resulting in the price being artificially held lower (to save some hedge funds that shorted it). In a just world, they would be arrested and tried for market manipulation.
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Well no...
The market should be open to everyone equally. The fact that a huge number of people want to buy shares is not market manipulation, it's how the market is supposed to function. Those people are buying shares as a result of publicly available information, they are not insider traders or anything else shady.
Brokerages preventing those people from buying the shares they want is manipulation, because they are artificially restricting the market.
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Thats the problem now. Our infrastructure is flat-out broken. A handful of organizations now control what you can do and what you can say online and on your devices (Apple, I am looking at you). Those reviews were legitimate. 100,000 people were upset with Robinhood, and spoke their minds. Google chose to ignore them and decided what Robinhood did was correct, even when we collectively disagreed with it vocally.
I don't see those reviews being more legitimate than people giving Harry Potter books and movies one star reviews because they disagree with Rowling's view on the trans issue. Reviews should be about the book or app in question, if it's just an organized instance of "we're upset with the entity behind this" is just noise to be avoided.
Re:trust (Score:5, Insightful)
So if all of a sudden, Amazon started removing books from your Kindle library without warning, the Kindle app itself should continue to get high reviews just because it functions properly without bugs?
Reviews apply to both the app and the service being provided by the app. Separating one from the other is disingenuous.
Re:trust (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think you understand the scale of this issue. A couple hundred or a couple thousand retail investors don't have enough power to manipulate stock prices of multi-billion dollar companies, especially with multi-billion dollar hedge funds moving against them. There are many many people involved.
The WSB subreddit has 6 million members. There are threads trashing Robinhood with tens of thousands of upvotes and thousands of comments. They are launching lawsuits and SEC complaints.
I have no problem believing 100k people from that group alone use Robinhood and were either directly affected, or have lost faith in the app due to Robinhood's actions. I'm surprised it isn't more than that actually... perhaps Google also stopped accepting reviews at some point so the cleanup is artificially low. A couple days ago when the shit was really hitting the fan, major brokerage websites like Fidelity were having capacity issues because so many people were trying to sign up for new accounts since their Robinhood (and a few others, but they seem to be the most popular) trading was frozen.
I agree with you that invalid reviews from bots or users who have nothing to do with the service should be deleted. It would be really easy for Google to delete reviews from people who haven't had the app installed, or even if we're being really cautious people who haven't had it installed for more than X days. It doesn't sound like that's what happened though.
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That's.... not at all accurate? Again, you need to do some research into the scale of this event.
Gamestop becomes most actively traded stock on Fidelity
https://www.theguardian.com/bu... [theguardian.com]
Gamestop the #1 most traded stock in the US.. in terms of dollar volume not just share count
https://www.wsj.com/livecovera... [wsj.com]
"Millions" of amateur traders taking on Wall Street's most sophisticated investors
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/0... [nytimes.com]
Gamestop still on Robinhood's most popular stocks list (that's for Robinhood users)
http [robinhood.com]
Re:trust (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see those reviews being more legitimate than...
And there is where you missed the point. The reviews were legitimate because the users spoke their minds about how the app operated. If I advertised an app and said "All Super Nintendo Games", and then revoked the right to play any Super Nintendo game that was developed by Nintendo itself, barring out Zelda and Mario, you would be perfectly right to review the app negatively. Thats exactly what Robinhood did. Not even getting into WHY they did it, it was very shitty, and the users should trash it if it impacted their ability to use the app for what it was intended for (to trade securities).
But beyond that. Legit reviews are reviews coming from legit users. If a botnet posted a bunch of reviews, sure, those are not legitimate. But thats not what happened here. Users expressed their opinion. You decided you didn't like WHY they expressed those opinions specifically, and you think thats grounds for removing them. Its quite authoritarian of you to try to control why someone else may be able to share a thought.
On Amazon, you can vote reviews as "helpful" or not, and that would be appropriate for you to do here, if it didn't help you determine what you wanted to know about the app.
But thinking its right for Google to outright remove the review that someone else would find helpful (for me, if I knew the app might one day just sell my stocks because they decided to, thats important information), is just plain evil.
Re:trust (Score:5, Insightful)
''impacted their ability to use the app for what it was intended for (to trade securities).''
Actually, it you have read their TOS they are very unfriendly toward trading. You must jump through hoops if you are marked as a high frequency trader. Whereas I don't necessarily agree with their decision, there's also no way I would ever consider using them to do other than invest.
Only a fool would consider using a broker who says order execution is free, uses their quotes and trades on a mobile platform. Professional traders would realize either the quotes are delayed, they aren't executing trades on the inside market, or they are receiving commission from whoever is executing the trade [IE not an inside trade at the time of the order].
If they are limiting purchase of securities I assume that it is due to the fact that some of those executions are made from inventory they hold, and they are attempting to limit their exposure to volatility. They are not a direct access brokerage, you can't decide what market you want your order to be executed.
Either way their TOS plainly states they aren't trader friendly.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:trust (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, it's a private service! You agree to their terms when you use it. If you don't like it start your own Google Play store!
'big /sarcasm'
Re:trust (Score:5, Funny)
I did and they called my new Play Store racist and shut it down!
Re: (Score:2)
Not sarcasm: why not start your own review site? A store can't possibly present reviews without a conflict of interest. That goes for Google and anywhere else. If you went to McDonalds and they said the Big Mac was rated 4.8/5, would you believe them?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:trust (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, you can build one. Of course hosting in the cloud makes the most sense, but then of course they can deny you hosting. So you could buy your own servers (if someone will sell them to you) - but then the colocation facilities could deny you access. So you could build your own facility - if you can find an ISP to provide you connectivity. And even then the other ISP's could refuse to route your traffic.
It's crazy how fast this place has gone from routing for net neutrality to "Whelp, it was against their TOS - tough luck.".
Re:trust (Score:4, Insightful)
It's crazy how you don't know what the fuck net neutrality is. It is NOT forcing Google to carry your content. It's forcing ISPs to carry your content.
I know exactly what net neutrality is. I was making a comparison. While tech companies picking and choosing who they want to allow on their platform isn't exactly ISP peering agreements, the end result is the same: arbitrarily blocking certain parties from participation on the web.
For whatever reason many seem to feel that's evil at the ISP level but as soon as you go one level up to a website it's all "Whelp, its a private business".
Re: (Score:3)
For whatever reason many seem to feel that's evil at the ISP level but as soon as you go one level up to a website it's all "Whelp, its a private business".
It's simple and obvious. An ISP is a utility. You cannot be on the internet without it. In that regard they are just like a water or power company, which if they cover your area, should also not be permitted to deny you service. As a utility, they should be regulated differently from other kinds of business. The answer "run your own damned website" doesn't work without requiring ISPs to behave as utilities. But that should be the answer, and ISPs should be required to behave as utilities because that is wha
Re:trust (Score:5, Informative)
Watch [phzoe.com] Youtube delete downvotes of Whitehouse videos.
Re:trust (Score:4, Insightful)
Time for everyone who left a negative Robinhood app review that got deleted to leave a negative review about Google.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm getting the impression that none of this Robin Hood stuff would have mattered if some rich bastards hadn't gotten burned. It's almost like your handle hit the fan?
(And your FP deserves the favorable moderation, even if it's so brief.)
review-"bombing" (Score:4, Insightful)
It's what they call it, when real humans dominate the scores, instead of the usual masses of paid bots.
Thanks, Nanny Google!
We trust you so much!
Re: (Score:2)
The shitty company behavior has nothing to do with the app itself.
Reviews are for the app, not the company
Re: review-"bombing" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
The app is not a generic client that can be used with any service. It is a client tied to a specific service.
Thus functionality and performance of the app is dependent on the service, and the two are inextricably linked. Any review of the app would naturally include the service to which it's tied too, as the app is completely useless without the service.
Forget the chinese and russians (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
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No, this is not in jest - grab the translation, you will find it verbatim except China is replaced by "Globalism".
One one had, he has a point, there are no democracies any more, multiple western countires have corporatism as the actual system of government. On another hand - Russia got there first so he should actually look in the "Gasprom/Deripaska Mirror (tm)".
Relevant xkcd (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I was reminded of this one: https://xkcd.com/1494/ [xkcd.com]
Geeks tend to think that everything should run on auto pilot, and that it is incumbent on companies to allow them to hack the system. If Google is removing absolutely all all negative reviews of RobinHood, then fuck them and you're wise to use a different store (Frdoid or whatever). If Google is removing negative reviews because they are part of a reviewbombing campaign, then where is the fault: how is the review useful to potential customers? The same go
Re:Relevant xkcd (Score:5, Insightful)
how is the review useful to potential customers?
What are you blabbering about?
A negative review that warns potential customers of a stock trading application that the said app may arbitrarily limit or remove access to your ability to trade assets that you own and expose you to losses because of this is extremely useful to the said potential customers.
Re: (Score:2)
While what you said about it being a relevant review, it doesn't expose you to losses. It may prevent gains, but not buying cannot cause you to suffer a loss.
Re:Relevant xkcd (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, reading is not running your eyes over the letters, it is taking in what they mean and making sense of it.
If an app you're using restricts your ability to trade, it most definitely exposes you to a loss risk. Depending on what you're trading, it may be a very significant loss risk.
A review that tells potential app users that the app may restrict trading ability is therefore informative and useful to all potential users who do not wish to be exposed to loss risks.
Re: (Score:2)
Not being able to buy cannot result in a loss. Not being able to trade (buy and sell) or just not being able to sell can. Or explain how not being able to buy can result in a loss as opposed to not being able to gain.
Words mean things
Re: (Score:3)
I think you need to look into the kinds of trades being discussed in TFA. In this case, not being able to trade DOES lead to people losing money.
This is about people playing chicken with each other with options and shorts, and RH limiting the trades of its customers increases the risk of those customers' options and shorts.
Re:Relevant xkcd (Score:5, Insightful)
Not being able to buy can definitely result in a loss.
If I've done my research and preparation and I want to buy a stock with the expectation that it will increase in value, and it does increase in value, but I am not able to purchase it because of an arbitrary decision of my broker to not let me do so is definitely a loss.
Not only is this a loss, but it is a loss directly attributable to a shitty company/app, which is acting against me, their customer.
Having reviews that point out the shitty behavior of such a broker and allowing me to avoid them is extremely useful to me.
You can, of course, disregard all negative reviews and keep using such a platform - but even this decision will be a better one because you've made an informed choice.
Re: (Score:3)
Disclaimer: I have six-digits of skin in the GME drama playing out.
It definitely did result in losses, both direct and indirect.
If you were monitoring the order book at the time, there was artificial forcing of the price downward generally referred to as a ladder attack.(1) At one point, being able to buy the next fifteen ask orders would've been enough to reset the nominal price from ~200 to ~400-- when there's fifteen transactions in the way of a 100% price increase, something's fishy. One of the major im
Re: (Score:3)
Melvin cannot buy if the stock price keeps going up because they literally don't have enough money. That's the squeeze. That's what's going on with this GME nonsense. Retail traders are buying up the stock and refusing to sell it, driving up the price and putting Melvin further and further into debt.
Obviously, Melvin
Re:Relevant xkcd (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems he was not alone either... https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Except that if I cannot realise an advantageous trade because of arbitrary restrictions on purchases that I was not made aware when signing a contract with the brokerage, I'm hurt/affected just the same.
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First: I'm not sure RobinHood is being arbitrary. But it is a "free" service which probably means you are the product, which leads me to . . .
Second: RH has always seemed supersketchy and I've never used it. But I'm not sure how much the the users really own. My understanding is that a lot of these are margin trades where even reputable brokers make you jump though hoops and agree to seemingly onerous conditions (I've never bought on margin for this reason+interest).
Third, if google is removing useful revie
Re: (Score:2)
I like that one as well. It also factors in with the GME traders who think they uncovered an infinite money hack. In reality, their trades have great payoffs, but also great risk. And someone is going to get caught holding the bag. It may be hedge funds, but it's probably going to include a lot of retail traders too.
Not review bombing (Score:5, Insightful)
A large number of people wanted to use the app, weren't able to for the purpose they wanted because RH was in the process of partnering with Citadel to decide how to bail out a hedge fund.
There are now multiple lawsuits filed, including a class action in NY plus calls from the house and senate floor from both parties for an investigation.
You gotta fuck up pretty hard, probably 1 start hard, to get AOC and Cruz to agree on something. So seems like relatively legit ratings.
Re: (Score:2)
> You gotta fuck up pretty hard, probably 1 start hard, to get AOC and Cruz to agree on something. So seems like relatively legit ratings.
That is a great point. Though really they just want attention.
Re:Not review bombing (Score:4, Insightful)
You gotta fuck up pretty hard, probably 1 start hard, to get AOC and Cruz to agree on something.
Nah, I'm pretty sure a well placed fart would do it.
AOC is not the person to solve this. Needless to say, Cruz isn't either.
As they say, opinions are like assholes. And Twitter has a monopoly.
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Citadel is denying link to RH. Decide for yourself if that's the truth. Ultimately, follow the money. It may or may not be Citadel but either RH is afraid of it's customers not being able to pay up (leaving RH stuck) or a hedge fund/bank is pulling the strings because they don't want to get stuck with losses.
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How could RH's customers being unable to pay up happen? They buy stock, they pay for it right away, done.
The ones making contracts that could bankrupt them are the short sellers. The brokers working with them have to be afraid a lot more.
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Exactly this. There seems to be good reason to believe the ratings were sincere in this case. This isn't like a case where company A bombs B's competing and comparable app.
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Funny that the CEO of RH didn't say that when specifically asked if that's what happened. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/2... [cnbc.com]
You'd think given that kind of cover he'd have jumped on it. Maybe the receptionist forgot to tell him the SEC called.
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"The broker’s initial decision was met with outrage from its band of loyal retail investors; however, Robinhood explained that the move was made to comply with capital requirements mandated by the SEC for broker dealers."
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The person I was responding to (maybe it was you) specifically said they were ordered to do this by the SEC. He specifically said they were not ordered to do it by the SEC.
Of course he said it was done to protect investors and the company, what the fuck else is he going to say ? And it's a bullshit argument. There was very low volume, certainly lower than earlier in the week on GME and GME represents a tiny fraction of the total RH customer base trades. It's big news but it's still a tiny fraction of t
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Luckily Bloomberg came to the rescue and gave him another crack at admitting it was the evil SEC that forced them to limit buys for multiple stocks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
They really need to fire that receptionist for not cluing him in.
.
What a clusterfuck (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, is there a single accurate source of information on the internet anymore? And if there is, how would you know? Everything is manipulated to keep up appearances, despite the whole world knowing it's manipulated. They do it despite not fooling anyone, and they know they're not fooling anyone. How sick is that?
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North Korea sick.
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Why limit that to the net? It's not like TV and newspapers have done any better.
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Seriously, is there a single accurate source of information on the internet anymore?
Was there ever?
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Free speech comes with responsibilities, and unfortunately, people here want to argue that they have no responsibility. People should be able to lie and cheat all they want and fuck the consequences because 'muricafreespeech!
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Seriously, is there a single accurate source of information on the internet anymore? And if there is, how would you know? Everything is manipulated to keep up appearances, despite the whole world knowing it's manipulated. They do it despite not fooling anyone, and they know they're not fooling anyone. How sick is that?
This is pretty much my view.
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Fuck Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Robinhood literally 'ganged up' on normal home traders for the big funds? Are you kidding me?
The app should be reported as a scam at this point, not just 1 star rated, but removed entirely.
Again: Fuck google, as usual.
Ridiculous censorship. (Score:3)
Every step from the stock shorting up to this ratings censorship just proves everything people do is manipulated to bring an individual in line if you didn't do what you were told.
Et tu, Apple? (Score:4, Interesting)
RobinHood actually did things (Score:3)
It is private company... (Score:4)
Full of regrets... (Score:2)
I would go tell google to blow it out their ass except google has 16 years of my un-backed up emails, life, purchases... I'll just sit here full of regret, maybe one day I can kick these terrorist to the curb.
Manipulate ratings (Score:2)
Google's policies explicitly prohibit reviews intended to manipulate an app's rating,
Surely all individual ratings are intended to manipulate the overall rating? Why else would anyone rate an app?
Re:Manipulate ratings (Score:4, Insightful)
Why else would anyone rate an app?
Have you read any app reviews lately? There's a whole smattering of people that seem to think the rating system is some form of technical support forum. There's also a fair amount of completely illegible comments.
Devil's advocate (Score:2, Insightful)
I hate Google as much as the next guy, but for once I think this is justified.
See the thing is, an app review is a review of the app: I expect to read whether it crashes my Android system, asks too many permissions or whether the UI is horrible: App reviews aren't really meant to review the policies of the company behind the app, now are they?
So yeah, Google removed reviews of RobinHood-as-a-company because they were off-topic.
The problem fundamentally is that people turn any place they can write something
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Re:Devil's advocate (Score:5, Insightful)
See the thing is, an app review is a review of the app: I expect to read whether it crashes my Android system, asks too many permissions or whether the UI is horrible: App reviews aren't really meant to review the policies of the company behind the app, now are they?
Normally not, unless said policies prevent you from using the app for the purpose you got it for.
People get the Robinhood app to trade stocks. If they cannot use it to execute the trades that they got it for -- regardless if it's due to a buggy implementation or a deliberate policy -- then a low rating is justified.
ANY rating? (Score:2)
Google's policies explicitly prohibit reviews intended to manipulate an app's rating,
Wouldn't that apply to any negative review?
Re: Conspiracy (Score:2)
No, it isn't. (Score:5, Informative)
Google appears to routinely remove negative reviews and manipulate ratings to promote apps that are beneficial to it in ways that only they know about.
I've bought probably over 300 apps over the past decade. Many of these were promising, so I chose to support them from the outset, and yet they turned to be crap, using various forms of bait and switch, which Google appears to like - for example, they'll remove a paid app altogether, or remove key features and re-offer them as "in-app purchases" or "rented apps", where you pay for a period of use, or whatever.
Virtually all negative reviews I've written that mention actual problems like the above, or massive privacy leaks (like a camera app, or worse, a stupid puzzle game asking access to contact list, call history, SMS text and application usage stats, not to mention location) will typically be quietly removed at most a few weeks after being posted.
The ratings are completely manipulated and nearly useless and the level of first-hand manipulation of reviews by Google appears enormous.
But that doesn't matter at all - I mean, the other ways Google manipulates the play store are even more egregious.
To give another example, how come google play still does not have proper "search my purchased apps" feature, so that I can easily find that app I bought a year ago? And after almost 15 years of existence? Nope, Google will show you a list of everything you can buy, but never the one that is on your "bought" list.
Elementary tricks out of the door-to-door salesman handbook, but apparently they work well enough for Google.
A List of bought apps has always been there. (Score:3)
It does include both paid and unpaid ones, so is fairly long, but you can curate it if you want - touch the x beside any app you know you won't want any more.
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Be my guest and waste your time scrolling around a list with apps. I have better uses for mine.
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TIL that google play store ratings are subject to veto by Google. Not that I intended to ever use it, since I can afford an Iphone and don't have to settle for a knock-off.
-jcr
Are you implying that Apple is impartial?
That's laughable.
Re: (Score:3)
Did you miss this part:
On Apple's App Store, Robinhood has a 4.7 rating, and we didn't see any reviews newer than Wednesday.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, wrong target. Was meant for jcr.
Re: Well, isn't that special? (Score:3)
since I can afford an Iphone and don't have to settle for a knock-off. Wanker--^
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Someone else made the same point above and its a little surprising that people don't see the difference, but I'll try to explain. If I review something, the theory is that I want to say what I liked for didn't like--this is probably what every single place that allows reviews wants people to do.
What they probably don't want, is for people to try to help or hurt the overall rating of--say--an app, by reviewing in conjunction with others or using certain keywords or whatever. Of course, I could intend boost
Re:"manipulate" ratings? (Score:4, Insightful)
If the reviews were bad because of something external to the app, like the CEO saying something that triggered a backlash, that would be a different matter - they wouldn't be rating the app, they'd be rating a guy. In this case however, the backlash is over changes to core functionality that outraged its users. The company needs to see that feedback and decide whether or not to roll back their changes, not have Google protect them from their customers. That doesn't even make sense.