Negative Robinhood Reviews Deleted
Jay Peters (via Slashdot, Hacker News):
Google is actively removing negative reviews of the Robinhood app from the Google Play Store, the company confirmed to The Verge. 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 currently has a 4.2 rating on the App Store, so presumably Apple has also removed lots of 1-star ratings, though I do see some recent ones calling out Robinhood for blocking people from trading.
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The wholesale deletion of these reviews is a bad move, and it breaks customers’ trust.
While I’m sure there were probably fraudulent ratings — which I consider to be ratings by people who haven’t used the app — I’d expect the majority are legitimately-aggrieved users, and Robinhood should have to eat the fallout of their choices and their ongoing naivety about the industry they’ve entered (and taken by storm).
What I don’t understand is why any store would wish to lose their users’ trust by encouraging such deception.
Because leaving the reviews, which clearly didn’t arise organically, around would be an even greater deception.
Since stocks in modern times are a virtual digital good, Apple must be laughing all the way to the bank. Their perfectly impartial and equitably-applied IAP rules means they now own 30% of a hedge fund!
An app could do something (let one trade stock freely) and got good reviews. Then it couldn't, and the original reviews became incorrect. But people can't inform others of that change? Seems like deceptive advertising to me. What I don't understand is why any store would wish to lose their users' trust by encouraging such deception.