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

indiatoday.in

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

#61

Post by 9935c101ab17a66 »

tiktokVsYoutube wrote: post #34

Posting from a throwaway account - This article barely scratches the surface. This was a very entertaining story that I followed to the minute and here’s some context: Tiktok content, specifically in India, from the very start has been very[1] very[2] _cringy_ (weird hairstyles, weird things being said, weird ways of expressing friendship, love, etc). I don’t mean the cringe that you associate with western Tiktok con…

Yo this is fascinating, I appreciate you writing it up. I googled Faizal Siddique before I found your comment, but the majority of the results are those SEO bait listicles — "The 17 things are intern found out about Faizal after 10 seconds of research"/

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

#62

Post by stonogo »

Carpetsmoker wrote: post #31
frequentnapper wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I happened to watch the video, which was a response to a Tiktok user badmouthing Youtube creators. I didn't really see any bullying, just funny retorts. I guess when it comes to Youtube, they just censor anything as long as enough people complain.

500 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute ; it's impossible to moderate all of that. "Lots of users reported it in a short timespan" is a reasonable heuristic to quickly remove ISIS beheading videos and whatnot. It's not perfect, but nothing YouTube does at this kind of scale will be.

> 500 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute; it's impossible to moderate all of that.

Ironically, I hear about this fact every time Youtube makes the news for ... you know ... moderating all of that.

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

#63

Post by quantummkv »

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

The population segment involved in this whole tiktok vs youtube drama mostly uses Android. iOS is not as popular in India as Android mostly due to higher prices.

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

#64

Post by Gigablah »

nwienert wrote: post #42
cmeacham98 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Google and censorship, not related?

Is antispam censorship? You tell me.

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

#65

Post by square_usual »

duskwuff wrote: post #48
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.

CarryMinati has nearly 20 million subscribers[1], and he was just one of many... forces, behind the reviews storm. India has over a billion people with at least 500 million smartphone users[2], tens of millions isn't that out of the way.

[1] https://socialblade.com/youtube/c/addicteda1 [2] https://www.news18.com/news/tech/smartphone-users-in-india-c...

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

#66

Post by villgax »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #60

Curious, how is India Today generally regarded in India? I ask because to me the style and tone of this article sounds like something that came out of an elementary school newspaper. E.g. "It was still the talk of the town but for all the wrong reasons", "could be the result of Google removing user reviews so that the app could get some balance." The hackneyed cliches and oddly stating a presumption as fact just stri…

It's fine, not great.

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

#67

Post by nwienert »

Gigablah wrote: post #64
nwienert wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google and censorship, not related?

Is antispam censorship? You tell me.

Haha that’s a really great way of putting it.

All the worst censorship is framed as anti-spam/hate/misinformation, absolutely.

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

#69

Post by blauditore »

Freeboots wrote: post #51
plerpin wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I swear you could generate a 100% realistic comment thread from a Markov chain of those broad topics.

https://hncynic.leod.org/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19694578

Wow, excerpt of my first attempt with this:

> I'm sure Google is planning to release a time machine which can manage the tracking of tasks that I just worked on last year.

> I can't tell if it's a "Google Timemachine" or a "Google Tracking App". If they release a "Time TimeMachine", this is a killer feature that will have a huge impact on how people interact with their time. I would be interested to know if this also means that you can just add a "Time TimeMachine" that will do some tracking on the number of meetings you have, or if I want to track your "time."

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

#70

Post by londons_explore »

I'd take a guess the real explanation is far simpler... Google let's anyone write a review, but if an end-of-week logs analysis shows that you never installed the app, or that the review was written via tor from an account created 30 seconds ago, then it's removed as spam.
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