Google has come under fire recently for removing thousands of negative Play Store reviews for the Robinhood app. This follows on from the events over the last hours and days that saw the Robinhood app receive its own criticisms. In fact, it is these criticisms of the app that led to a sudden review bombing on the Google Play Store. Here’s what happened and why Google removed the reviews.
As heavily reported over the last few days, GameStop stock suddenly surged. Robinhood is an app that can be used to buy and sell stocks and it is understood to have been used to help fuel the GameStop spike. Due to how the app was being used, Robinhood temporarily suspended buying of GameStop stock, citing regulatory reasons. Since making that decision, a class-action lawsuit has been launched by users of the app.
With Robinhood suddenly stopping users from trading, many took to the Play Store to leave a negative review. The problem was, a lot of users did this, resulting in the overall review score significantly dropping. As spotted by 9to5 Google, following this sudden drop in app review score, many recent negative reviews disappeared completely, pushing the overall score up from one to almost four stars. Based on screenshots captured at the time, it seems as many as 100,000 reviews had recently been deleted by Google.
Why Google Deleted The Negative Reviews
In comments provided to The Verge, a Google spokesperson not only confirmed that the reviews had been deleted, but also explained why. Essentially, Google has Play Store policies in place that are designed to limit app review score manipulation. Using both AI and manual checks, Google takes action against reviews it considers to be attempting to intentionally affect the score. According to Google’s comments, this is what directly led to the removal of so many Robinhood app reviews.
From Google’s perspective, it is understandable that the company would take the action that it has. After all, the drop in score is significant and relates to a single event in the app’s history. In this sense, the score might not be totally representative of the overall app experience. Of course, if as many as 100,000 reviews were deleted by Google, it does raise the question of whether they were all intentionally trying to manipulate the score. The app did make a decision to limit what users can do and if users feel that’s a step too far, then there is an argument to be made that they are within their right to voice those complaints on Robinhood’s Google Play Store app page.
Source: 9to5 Google, The Verge