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Google removes over 5M reviews from Play Store to improve TikTok rating

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Re: Google removes over 5M reviews from Play Store to improve TikTok rating

#41

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

kumarvvr wrote: post #40

I understand the need to remove "review bombs", but aren't review bombs reviews too? Say a company that develops a product says or does something insensitive, in the earlier days, people would publicly boycott that product, related products or what have you. The company would either stand down and apologize, or put it's foot down and say it's right. Now picture the same thing with Tik-Tok. There are innumerable insta…

The point of a reviews from an app store's perspective is to help users decide whether they would benefit from an app. That some subreddit or Twitter or whatever decides to brigade a particular app does not necessarily provide much signal about whether a generic user will want an app. An app marketplace is not generally going to be interested in facilitating boycotts on apps in the given marketplace. If it wants an app boycotted, it can ban it. Otherwise, the incentives are probably not aligned.

Re: Google removes over 5M reviews from Play Store to improve TikTok rating

#42

Post by nwienert »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #35
nwienert wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea would like to see source outside DailyMail. Also to people downvoting, why? I’m not backing the source, I’m just curious.

Likely because you posted a comment asking if a source is true on a completely unrelated post.

Google and censorship, not related?

Re: Google removes over 5M reviews from Play Store to improve TikTok rating

#43

Post by duskwuff »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #37
DigitallyFidget wrote: post #15

It has only a 1.4 star rating as of right now. It clearly didn't do anything to help the rating of the app.

Oh wow. Why such difference with iOS store where it’s over 4? Edit: it’s all clearly spam on Google Store

It's even more obvious on the "lite" version of their app. Within the last month (probably even more recently), the total number of installs nearly doubled, and the rating dropped from a reasonably stable 4.0 to 1.1.

https://www.androidrank.org/application/tiktok_lite/com.zhil...

(Amusingly, the ratings of the other TikTok app, which looks like it might not be available in India, are unaffected: https://www.androidrank.org/application/tiktok/com.ss.androi...)

I have a very hard time believing that this represents organic user behavior. It seems far more likely that someone's scripted the process of installing and rating the apps.

Re: Google removes over 5M reviews from Play Store to improve TikTok rating

#44

Post by tw1912112 »

This is a really good case for network effects. If you go through the reviews, a lot of people are complaining that they are not getting any "views" for their content. As more and more people are bombing the reviews, uninstalling, it's discouraging people from creating more content because it's not being viewed enough.

Does anyone know if disabling views or delaying gratification of content will reduce the damaging effect on the TikTok network?

Also, vis-a-vis Yelp, why should review bombs be removed when I can go to a restaurant and review it as 1-rated if I am not treated well by them even if I don't complete any transaction?

Re: Google removes over 5M reviews from Play Store to improve TikTok rating

#45

Post by tw1912112 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #5

> "Another reason was the enraged fans of famous Indian YouTuber Carry Minati flooding PlayStore with 1-star reviews. Carry Minati had created a video titled YouTube Vs TikTok, part of an ongoing feud between YouTube and TikTok users. His video went viral and was taken down for violating YouTube’s terms of service. This happended because many TikTok users reported the video saying it was bullying in nature." Seems re…

I posted in other comment, if I tell you that X restaurant sucks because they have rats everywhere, and you go to that restaurant and actually see the rats and rate it as 1 star on Yelp, are those not authentic users? Who counts as authentic user on TikTok, do the people who have viewed videos created on TikTok but shared on Twitter?

Re: Google removes over 5M reviews from Play Store to improve TikTok rating

#46

Post by newacct583 »

kumarvvr wrote: post #40

I understand the need to remove "review bombs", but aren't review bombs reviews too? Say a company that develops a product says or does something insensitive, in the earlier days, people would publicly boycott that product, related products or what have you. The company would either stand down and apologize, or put it's foot down and say it's right. Now picture the same thing with Tik-Tok. There are innumerable insta…

> aren't review bombs reviews too?

No? I mean, a review is supposed to be an informed opinion of another user of the software telling me whether it meets the expectations its store page sets. If reviews become generic forums for comments on corporate policies then they become useless.

I'm with Google here. They provide many forums for people to complain about TikTok already. They certainly shouldn't be forced to do so in app reviews.

Re: Google removes over 5M reviews from Play Store to improve TikTok rating

#47

Post by Barrin92 »

tw1912112 wrote: post #45
Barrin92 wrote: post #5

> "Another reason was the enraged fans of famous Indian YouTuber Carry Minati flooding PlayStore with 1-star reviews. Carry Minati had created a video titled YouTube Vs TikTok, part of an ongoing feud between YouTube and TikTok users. His video went viral and was taken down for violating YouTube’s terms of service. This happended because many TikTok users reported the video saying it was bullying in nature." Seems re…

I posted in other comment, if I tell you that X restaurant sucks because they have rats everywhere, and you go to that restaurant and actually see the rats and rate it as 1 star on Yelp, are those not authentic users? Who counts as authentic user on TikTok, do the people who have viewed videos created on TikTok but shared on Twitter?

> f I tell you that X restaurant sucks because they have rats everywhere, and you go to that restaurant and actually see the rats and rate it as 1 star on Yelp, are those not authentic users?

Yes they are but that's not what's going on here. The barrage of downvotes in this case was the result of a platform feud between Youtube and TikTok content creators who told their userbases to go and vote the app down, and some sort of issue between India and China.

These people likely have not used the app at all, aren't actually evaluating the app itself, and the grievances they have are likely irrelevant to the vast majority of users who look at the rating.

Re: Google removes over 5M reviews from Play Store to improve TikTok rating

#48

Post by duskwuff »

Barrin92 wrote: post #5

> "Another reason was the enraged fans of famous Indian YouTuber Carry Minati flooding PlayStore with 1-star reviews. Carry Minati had created a video titled YouTube Vs TikTok, part of an ongoing feud between YouTube and TikTok users. His video went viral and was taken down for violating YouTube’s terms of service. This happended because many TikTok users reported the video saying it was bullying in nature." Seems re…

I don't think it's even brigading -- that implies that it's at least humans. The app gained somewhere on the order of tens of millions of one-star reviews over a short period of time. To me, that sounds more like someone's generating the one-star reviews.

Re: Google removes over 5M reviews from Play Store to improve TikTok rating

#49

Post by tw1912112 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #47
tw1912112 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posted in other comment, if I tell you that X restaurant sucks because they have rats everywhere, and you go to that restaurant and actually see the rats and rate it as 1 star on Yelp, are those not authentic users? Who counts as authentic user on TikTok, do the people who have viewed videos created on TikTok but shared on Twitter?

> f I tell you that X restaurant sucks because they have rats everywhere, and you go to that restaurant and actually see the rats and rate it as 1 star on Yelp, are those not authentic users? Yes they are but that's not what's going on here. The barrage of downvotes in this case was the result of a platform feud between Youtube and TikTok content creators who told their userbases to go and vote the app down, and some…

That's not true, there are plenty of disturbing videos of men promoting rapes and assaulting them using chemicals. If those videos were restricted to TikTok, that would have been a different case but TikTok actively promotes sharing these videos on other networks and the viewers have authentic concerns.

I agree that PlayStore is doing it right by removing the reviews that are related to the service but not pertaining to the Android App itself, but then what counts as "using the app"? Seeing the videos created on TikTok counts as "using the app" or just the experience of the app itself? I would describe those reviews as "non-descriptive" than irrelevant, but yes they are very noisy. It's about the same as rating 4chan on trustpilot.

Also, if any country that has banned TikTok, like UAE or Indonesia, because of a different jurisdiction, then it's a valid criticism? If I go to a restaurant, and they only accept Chinese currency, then I would rate it as 1-star since I have only USD and the restaurant is not my preference.

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