Robinhood Plummets Back Down To a One-Star Rating on Google Play (theverge.com) 97
Investment app Robinhood has plummeted back down to a one-star rating on Google Play, thanks to a flood of thousands of new negative reviews. From a report: The latest low rating comes just days after Google salvaged the app's rating by removing nearly 100,000 reviews, following a flood of negative ratings after the Robinhood blocked purchases of popular stocks from Reddit's /r/WallStreetBets like GameStop or AMC last week. Google confirmed to The Verge at the time that it was actively removing negative reviews on the app.
The review rollercoaster for Robinhood's rating has been nearly as up-and-down as GameStop's stock price. When users began to review bomb the app last Thursday, Robinhood reached a one-star rating with nearly 275,000 reviews. Google then removed nearly 100,000 of those reviews, putting the app back at a four-star average with roughly 180,000 reviews. But as of the publication of this article, Robinhood has returned to a new high of almost 305,000 reviews, along with a 1.1-star rating. Google's Play Store policies do explicitly ban reviews that are intended to "manipulate the rating" of an app; the company had previously removed earlier Robinhood reviews because it felt that they violated that policy. A Google spokesperson did confirm to The Verge that the current reviews -- which were not the ones deleted in last week's purge -- are compliant to Google's policies, and won't be removed.
The review rollercoaster for Robinhood's rating has been nearly as up-and-down as GameStop's stock price. When users began to review bomb the app last Thursday, Robinhood reached a one-star rating with nearly 275,000 reviews. Google then removed nearly 100,000 of those reviews, putting the app back at a four-star average with roughly 180,000 reviews. But as of the publication of this article, Robinhood has returned to a new high of almost 305,000 reviews, along with a 1.1-star rating. Google's Play Store policies do explicitly ban reviews that are intended to "manipulate the rating" of an app; the company had previously removed earlier Robinhood reviews because it felt that they violated that policy. A Google spokesperson did confirm to The Verge that the current reviews -- which were not the ones deleted in last week's purge -- are compliant to Google's policies, and won't be removed.
"manipulate the rating" (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're leaving a review, you're manipulating the ratings. Well of course I am! That's the point. To add 1 star to warn others.
But when Google manipulates 100000 reviews, that's fine and dandy, because it's their platform. Not that their shitshow of a store had any worthy or reliable ratings really
Re: "manipulate the rating" (Score:5, Funny)
The concept of trusting random text on the screen, that may or may not be from an actual human *that you know nothing about, and never met* is ridiculous anyway.
The only usable reviews are those by friends, and occasionally by well-known people with a track record that lets you judge them and a reputation to lose. (Example: Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation.) Bonus points if they do not give a shit what anyone thinks of if anyone likes their views.
Re: "manipulate the rating" (Score:5, Interesting)
No it is not.
It has its flaws as any other system involving humans and trust, but it does work to a good extent and far beyond what "no information" could do.
eBay would not exist without the reputation system, they just forgot to make any progress somewhere after 2002 and mentally stayed in the GeoCities era of the Internet.
Amazon capitalised on this blunder and implemented a rating system for the products themselves, and that is their most important asset, in my personal opinion. It is easy to discern between mediocre and stellar products, or get to know what the product can and cannot do. This is the main reason people can buy cheap products straight from the manufacturers instead of having to rely on brands and their quality controls, leading to cheaper products for consumers and Western brands becoming increasingly irrelevant or bought by the OEMs in China, unless the Western brands manage to gain emotional cloud and turn their customers into loyal fans and brand ambassadors. Looking at Cupertino here.
Until the automatic translators become bulletproof wordsmiths, I will always recognize when the sellers themselves are astroturfing their products.
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Sadly, it gets gamed like everything else. Amazon reviews are harder to trust than they used to be.
Amazon flooded with thousands of fake reviews [cnbc.com]
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I intend to report it to Amazon if I ever figure out how to do it. Not that I expect that to do much good, but still...
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I just got a postcard in the mail a couple weeks back, promising a $50 Amazon gift card in exchange for a 5-star review of a product I had purchased... I intend to report it to Amazon if I ever figure out how to do it...
Why don't you just post an honest review, and mention the incident you just described in that review? Let the chips fall where they may. If more people did that the practice would be severely curtailed - no seller wants it widely known that they're buying good reviews.
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It's really sad, that people do try to build some sort of remote community (originally with ok reviews, even if many are out of rage/emotional), and the moment this becomes a thing, here come the manipulators to game the system, and we're back at step 1, asking real friends if they bought the product. So we have this wonderful internet thing where unimaginable information is at your fingertips, and they're just making the information more and more unreliable by the day, damaging trust in the system permanen
Equality (Score:1)
Equality always does this. You have to filter out the bad people or they take over. Equality just means "good and bad are equal."
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But it's not equal, is it? And it's not people we're directly competing against. Because, with the advent of all things digital, for every real human we have lots of bots. It doesn't cost to spawn a bot (ok a bit of server time). Throw enough money and the number of humans is dwarfed in comparison. Google deleting 100000 reviews and I'm adding one is not equal.
Paradox (Score:2)
It never is, because nothing in life is.
True, and one might think that decency would compel them to be fair.
But one would be wrong.
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Not expecting equality or other utopian scenarios, just some tolerable signal-to-noise ratio that I can manage to filter. These days it's just noise...
White Noise (Score:1)
If you haven't read White Noise by Don Delillo, now is the time. It and Naked Lunch are the best of the postmodern novels.
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I don't know the reviewer you refer to but the example I would offer is AvE on Youtube. His reviews of tools are long form videos and he physically disassembles things to judge the build quality. I can instantly trust something like that without needing to know much about him or his m
Re: "manipulate the rating" (Score:1)
That depends, most people donâ(TM)t have every trade and job you need on a regular day in their pools of families and friends. And online reviews by bigger names are just as dodgy if not more so than written reviews on Yelp or Google.
Between companies funding reviewers with exclusives and test products they can keep, outright shilling for ad revenue and the fact Google/Facebook and the rest of the tech broâ(TM)s owning those platforms itâ(TM)s probably worse to believe a YouTube talking head
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I would say that random people on the internet have a pretty good track history of providing good useful reviews. Spam/bot content is normally fairly obvious. While I like Yahtzee's stuff, first off he produces entertainment not actual reviews, and verified reviewers tend to do a worse job than the mob. Either you believe that their has been a huge concerted disinformation campaign regarding tv and film ratings, or it is pretty obvious that professional reviewers are absolutely horrible at predicting if a r
Re: "manipulate the rating" (Score:2)
Don't forget that we have AI capable of writing convincing (as by a human) stories. Not enough to write a bestselling novel, but good enough for a short review.
What and who you can trust is just going to get murkier as time goes on, while the art of the deepfake continues to only get better.
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Anosognosia runs deep in the "tech"-sphere.
Did you just assum xir gender? (Score:1)
Quakeulf's Mom, formerly his Dad, has a penis and breasts.
Quakeulf's Dad, formerly his Mom, also has a penis and breasts.
In the future, everything will be androgynous, and that way, we will finally be equal and free from judgment.
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Anosognosia runs deep in the "tech"-sphere.
Anosognosia runs deep in the "tech"-sphere.
Especially on Slashdot
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It's become a global pandemic of its own. The "Streisand-effect" is a mere symptom, and yet so many have built lifestyles out of this. It is definitely something that needs urgent attention from health & wellbeing personell.
Anusognosia? (Score:2)
Knowing of the anus (or even the ANUS [anus.com]) must mean sodomy. If so, you're right. Everything's about the warm pulsing butt in tech.
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Trying a little too hard, there.
In through the out door (Score:1)
In denial, are we? Let me show you some pictures from a Finnish men's swimwear catalog here...
Re:"manipulate the rating" (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the most ridiculous case of companies manipulating their rating I have ever seen. Google wasn't removing poor ratings which were based on people thinking the CEO doesn't like Trump enough or isn't woke enough. I can understand that reasoning. These negative reviews were directly based on how the company's actions affected their users. It is precisely what the review system is there for.
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Ironically, because Robinhood prevented users from "manipulating the rating" of GME.
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Creating a platform to trade shares, then restricting the ability to buy shares in a "hot" stock isn't manipulation. If I get a "hot stock tip" and find out my platform won't let me trade because it's too hot a stock tip, well, I'd be pissed.
It's a trading platform, it should be neutral and not block my ability to buy or sell stocks as I see fit. If I needed stock advice, I'd go to a full service broker - you know, the ones
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Creating a platform to trade shares, then restricting the ability to buy shares in a "hot" stock isn't manipulation.
I see you're making the connection. Equally, these bad reviews aren't manipulation in any real sense either.
Re: "manipulate the rating" (Score:5, Insightful)
RobinHood functionality and stability have taken a shit over the last week. No one cares if they were ordered by an investor or if they failed due to their own shit risk management. In any case, the app is broken and costing people money. That's pretty much the poster child for a 1 star app.
Re:"manipulate the rating" (Score:5, Insightful)
The review system on an app store exists to rate an app's functionality and stability, so that other users can get an impression of how reliable that app is. Abusing the review system as a way to "stick it to the man" defeats the very purpose of that rating.
The review system is for whatever the customer decides that it’s for. For the company and app makers, it’s free fucking content and advertising that you gladly give away. For free. “Rate my app”, “rate my app” pop ups 20 times per day on apps you paid for, now that’s abuse.
The notion that you’re “abusing” anything by giving it whatever rating you want t to give it is bstshit insane.
It’s not a benevolent “system”. It’s a way to dupe the masses into working for free. They nag you and beg you and nag you some more to do it. I give every rating nag a 1-star, because that’s what I feel like giving it. You don’t owe anyone shit, and neither do I. Hound me to “rate” something, you get what you get.
Nobody owes you anything.
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No, it's not. The review system on an app store exists to rate an app's functionality and stability, so that other users can get an impression of how reliable that app is. Abusing the review system as a way to "stick it to the man" defeats the very purpose of that rating.
The app does not work as advertised, if you actually read the reviews you can clearly see people are pointing out how they've lost money as a result of instability, glitches and service outages. People have complimented the UI but criticised that the app isn't allowing them to close position in line with the time they make the call and seems to randomly sell stock for no reason when it suits the developers. The recent random restrictions on stock purchases for no legitimate reason make up only a fraction o
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I'm pretty sure not being able to buy a certain stock that is popular right now means that the functionality of the app is not as advertised, whatever the reason for it.
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A restriction for external reasons is not a broken app.
An app being literally broken is not the only reason for a 1 star rating. An app working not as intended, such as not letting you trade the stocks you want which can be traded on other platforms, is broken enough.
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The review system on an app store exists to rate an app's functionality and stability, so that other users can get an impression of how reliable that app is
That's particularly limiting definition that makes a review almost useless, and it certainly doesn't follow the definition of "review" that we've been using for over a hundred years. Review has typically encompassed "quality level" as well, like how entertaining a movie is, how much better product X does a task than product Y, and so forth. If John C. Moneybags can use his influence to prevent ordinary users from affecting the market like he can and ordinary users make up Robinhood's base, then that affects
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In this scenario, Google has the hedge fund that needs to be protected.
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Or it's IN the hedge fund that needs to be protected...
Re:"manipulate the rating" (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're leaving a review, you're manipulating the ratings. Well of course I am! That's the point. To add 1 star to warn others.
But when Google manipulates 100000 reviews, that's fine and dandy, because it's their platform. Not that their shitshow of a store had any worthy or reliable ratings really
Here are some rules of thumb on how this works:
Re: "manipulate the rating" (Score:2)
When I see an app that seems to have a ton of 5 star ratings that say "This app is great!", and the names seem like they are autogenerated, or pulled out of some "book of names to give your newborn", I get suspicious.
There are money laundering schemes going on on sites like Amazon, where books full of nonsense or plagerized works are being published and the "author" is buying his own book, and you have reviews that have little or no detail posted under fake names.
Re: "manipulate the rating" (Score:2)
I wish I could give a better description, but your Spidey senses will just have to be able to tingle, and hopefully my post will help them to do that.
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The goal of a review system should reflect how users of the service/product felt about the service they used. Therefore, if someone has never used Robinhood but got angry about a news story about them and left a review, that should NOT be considered a legitimate review. But if you used Robinhood and found yourself frozen out of trades on the stocks you wanted, that's a very legitimate customer grievance. Supposedly the earlier low rating was due to the review bombing, but the current low rating follows the
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Isn't the whole point of a review... (Score:5, Insightful)
"to manipulate the rating"?
Why else would you post a star rating, if not for it to have an effect on the total rating.
This is like "We will burn these ballots because those people voted to change the outcome of the election.". ;)
This *proves* that all ratings on Google Play are deliberately fake and only exist for Google's gains. It is actively hostile to you. Just like YouTube or Amazon, whose algoritms are an active enemy of the "user".
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Or, you know, the normal interpretation of that statement which is to ban paid reviews, incentives to give higher ratings, phone farms etc.
By your logic there are no reliable reviews anywhere because they all have similar terms.
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Unless you're promoting the idea that a significant number of the negative reviews were left by bots, that line of reasoning is irrelevant.
If Google is willing to fraudulently remove 100,000 reviews of an app because they want to continue to profit from it, then they are certainly willing to remove other reviews.
Therefore, zero of the reviews on the play store can be trusted.
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It looks like a fuck-up on their end. Normally when an app suddenly gets 100,000 negative reviews their automated system flags it up as an attack by a review farm. Now they have checked it out manually the system isn't flagging it anymore.
I was wrong, it looks like the reviews are genuine.
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It looks like a fuck-up on their end.
it's a fuck-up all right.
Normally when an app suddenly gets 100,000 negative reviews their automated system flags it up as an attack by a review farm.
So their system has an automated fuckup built in? Excellent.
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Spam filtering is imperfect, hardly a big surprise.
Don't become one of the freeze peach warriors who screams censorship every time a spam filter screws up.
Re: Isn't the whole point of a review... (Score:2)
If the spam filter is designed to fail in Google's favor then it is a tool of censorship. Google claims to be best at spam filtering and has the largest training corpus. They have no excuse. They can also afford to have a human approve any massive changes so they have doubly no excuse.
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Since it is a free app, the only definition for "manipulation" that I can see is if non-users download the app just to leave a negative review. I am pretty sure google knows when you downloaded the app, so they could potentially filter out the malicious reviews.
But I don't think that's what google did, as according to most accounts, the WSB crowd makes up for a significant portion of Robinhood users, so at least those users would have left a negative review (rightfully so), so the app could not possibly hav
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To be fair, the ratings system is for you to rate the quality of the application, not whether or not you agree with the company's policy or behavior.
Users were hitting it with a 1 star review because they disagreed with what the company was doing, basically mixing politics with products. And that's why google wiped some of the reviews, because they weren't based on actual customer experience with the app. The reviews were no more genuine than if I paid a bot herder to post a bunch of negative reviews.
The
Re:Isn't the whole point of a review... (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, the ratings system is for you to rate the quality of the application, not whether or not you agree with the company's policy or behavior.
It's not a productivity app, it's sole functionality is tied directly into the platform. It's appropriate to review both.
Re: Isn't the whole point of a review... (Score:4, Insightful)
The application was broke due to policy. No one cares or even knows for sure if it's a bug, a reaction to their own poor risk management, or shite policy. All they know is the app isn't working and it's costing them money. If that doesn't deserve 1 star, nothing does. It's effectively malware at this point for lots of people.
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Users were hitting it with a 1 star review because they disagreed with what the company was doing, basically mixing politics with products.
If a company does something you don't like that doesn't affect the app, I sort of agree with you that targeting the app's rating as "payback" is not fair.
In this case, the company's policy decision directly affects what you can do with the app, so it's fair to rate the app for that.
And that's why google wiped some of the reviews, because they weren't based on actual customer experience with the app.
I find that really hard to believe. I doubt Google has ever removed a review that said something like "I used to like this app, but I'm giving it 1 star because the CEO said something bad about Trump" for instance. Glad to be pro
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"This *proves* that all ratings on Google Play are deliberately fake and only exist for Google's gains."
Hardly.
What is actually meant is "gaming the system" ... "to manipulate the rating", but that is likely harder to define and enforce, or maybe the people who wrote it are stupid. The last sentence, which you ignored, "A Google spokesperson did confirm ... that the current reviews ... are compliant to Google's policies, and won't be removed" runs directly contrary to your conclusion.
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Isn't the whole point of a review "to manipulate the rating"?
No. The whole point of a review is to give a representative indication of what the general mass of the userbase thought about the product.
I suspect that 90%+ of users don't bother to leave ratings or reviews. If one segment of the userbase is disproportionately likely to lead reviews, then the review star rating will no longer be a representative indication of what people think in general. This might happen with an amazon product where the seller actively works to raise the rating by actively encouraging th
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I suspect that 90%+ of users don't bother to leave ratings or reviews. If one segment of the userbase is disproportionately likely to lead reviews, then the review star rating will no longer be a representative indication of what people think in general. This might happen with an amazon product where the seller actively works to raise the rating by actively encouraging the dedicated fans to leave their ratings (which will be more positive than most users).
Which is why user reviews should always be treated with extreme suspicion. You can't be sure that an app with 70% positive reviews actually has 70% of their user base thinking positively about it, or whether it's manipulated, and no one really has the ability to tell the difference.
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Why else would you post a star rating, if not for it to have an effect on the total rating.
You're being disingenuous. There's clearly a difference between posting a review with your opinion, and organizing a mass campaign to manipulate the rating. Yes, both will change the average, but they're completely different.
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Why else would you post a star rating, if not for it to have an effect on the total rating.
Remember when that botnet was used to downvote all your slashdot posts and lower your karma rating?
It was just some asshole trying to screw with you. Lots of people actually.
Are you now arguing those bots wouldn't have done that if you weren't actually posting all -1 troll comments?
You shouldn't be so hard on yourself! :P
I mean I know we don't always see eye-to-eye and disagree on things, but that doesn't equate to trolling or deserving of troll mods
If it is so bad, stop using it? (Score:2)
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If people were more reliable about deleting unused apps, yes.
Re: If it is so bad, stop using it? (Score:2)
You have to move your assets out first. And it turns out RobinHood is taking WEEKS to process requests to move assets off the platform.
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Next it will be "hackers broke in and stole your stocks". Seems like they learned how to run their business from crypto exchanges.
Re: If it is so bad, stop using it? (Score:3)
Because in addition to their other shenanigans, Robinhood has was blocking people from exiting and are continuing to make it slow and difficult.
You canâ(TM)t just delete the app. You need to transfer your portfolio to another brokerage. Theyâ(TM)ve disabled the statement download function... which you need to transfer your portfolio... instead forcing you to email their customer support, jump though the usual scripted support minion hoops, and then wait, wait, and wait. Theyâ(TM)ve tacked on
Google, the arbiter of what you suppose to like (Score:1, Flamebait)
deserving? (Score:4, Insightful)
They'll save an app from an army of attackers (Score:5, Insightful)
But condemn an app because one butthurt asshole saw something bad.
What am I referencing? How Element was removed by Google [twitter.com] over literally one bad report about content on matrix.org.
The worst part is that when Element was added back people were celebrating rather than spitting in Google's face for such absolute, unmitigated pro-snowflake grade A bullshit.
What's next? Someone found they could talk to racists on the intertubez so Firefox gets banned?
They always do this (Score:4, Insightful)
"Enforce our censorship codes, or we'll KNOW that you're with the BAD GUYS and therefore must also be censored."
Silicon Valley's first generation of internet pioneers got their money and got out. Then the wannabes and also-rans move in and took over.
Re: Google is a private company (Score:2)
America is a democratic country.
If you do not like the country, you can fuck right off, Google.
Let's see how your servers fare against an armored tank division.
legitimate negative reviews. (Score:3, Insightful)
The value of 1-star ratings (Score:3)
Corporations have always treated their customers as livestock. It's not news. We also know many ratings are fake and biased when costumers give 4- or 5-star ratings only to say they haven't found an issue 2 minutes after using a product for their first time. Anyone who wants to find the truth about a product has got a hard time finding it in the countless high ratings. And nobody likes reading lengthy ratings with an endless amount of superficial praise by someone who is just happy with their purchase and doesn't know how to write an objective review.
To find an unbiased, truthful rating has become as tedious as finding a needle in a haystack. Costumers appear to put more effort into their low ratings than into their high ratings, and when there are few low-star ratings can these be skimmed fast and give a different impression of a product's quality. This is why 1- and 2-star ratings have a value. Not all of them are written by angry costumers, but some costumers give good insights over failures in the product, service or the company itself and it is in the frequency of these low ratings that actual problems show themselves.
While the behaviour of Google is disgusting and despicable for being a massive violation against the right to free speech, are they also doing us a favour by removing all the recent 1-star ratings, because most will come from angry people who will all say the same things, and one cannot find the precious 1-star ratings that provide the important insights and truths on a product. In order to be completely fair does one have to admit that the ratings system was never objective in the first place, and in a sense is Google helping us to keep the status quo by removing the vast majority of low star ratings even when it's not right when they do this.
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s/costumers/customers/ ...
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s/costumers/customers/ ...
Well, there's probably some overlap..
And GME stock is down to $85 (Score:2)
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go ahead and remove them but... (Score:2)
google better make sure they are removing reviews submitted by non-users of the app. They should never remove reviews submitted by users. Otherwise, they are the ones doing the manipulation.
Re: go ahead and remove them but... (Score:3)
What if I just stopped using the app because of this?
What if I just tried it out for five minutes, was unable to do what I expected it to do, and uninstalled it again?
I don't think the Play Store even allows reviews if you never tried the app.
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They wern't the only broker (Score:2)
There were lots of brokers that implemented similar restrictions, I don't think robinhood is a great app, but it doesn't deserve a 1 star rating. I don't think people understand the scale of money that was being moved around last week. There were more trades last thursday then at any point in history.
When you sell a stock or move money into an account, it takes 2 days to clear the transaction. If robinhood would have continued to allow people to buy those stocks they would have had to halt trading on all th
Robinhood pissed off its userbase (Score:2)
These are honest reviews of angry users. How they justified removing the first wave is dubious at best. They should let the rest stay.
Robinhood is hemorrhaging users and will likely be out of the game all the way within 6 months.