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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

#81

Post by superasn »

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…

India today is the most widely circulated magazine in India and had a lot of prominent journalist associated with it.

Unfortunately in this day of freelance writers, publications care more about views and speed than quality and this has happened to almost all print media be it Forbes(1) or India today.

(1) https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

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

#82

Post by duskwuff »

square_usual wrote: post #65
duskwuff wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> India has over a billion people with at least 500 million smartphone users, tens of millions isn't that out of the way.

One out of every fifty or so people in a country the size of India getting involved enough in an Internet fight to download and rate an Android app is pretty hard to believe.

10M is a huge number, even for a big country like India.

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

#83

Post by TechticSolution »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #7

This really hits on a lot of nerves of the general HN crowd (especially when these things are combined): - Google - "Censorship" (loosely defined) - China (vs India vs a US company, which could really be its own point) But if you read the article it seems to be a logical decision. Google (likely) did something similar for zoom: https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/03/24/zooms-android-app-r... Assuming there's nothing l…

If Google want to remove all negative review at TikTok app then Google first ask personally to all reviewers. If reviewers are agree to remove their review then Google proceed.

If Google want to remove all negative review then Google also allow all fake reviewer for increasing any app rating.

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

#85

Post by triplea9 »

randomsearch wrote: post #75
foolmeonce wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google (likely) did something similar for zoom Zoom is a good example of terrible user experience. It won't even summarize the status of your connection and the meeting you are trying to join. If Skype fixed Multi-Party and made it free we would have roasted Microsoft for doing it as poorly as Zoom and Google would have filtered nothing.

Bit OT but agree Zoom UX is weird awful. Still, the video works nearly all the time, which I guess is the most important thing.

What specific aspects of the UX would you say are awful? Because at the moment I’d strongly disagree, Zooms UX, along with how easy it is to join meetings, is one of the primary reasons it’s popularity has skyrocketed since the pandemic started. Users find it extremely simple and easy to use.

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

#86

Post by ketzu »

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…

I aggree that "review bombs" are reviews too, but they intend to review something different from what is intended: the company creating the product instead of the product.

If you intend the reviews to be a help for deciding on the merits of the product, they are noise. Many people consider "didn't fit my purpose 1/5" or "amazon canceled the shipping on me 1/5" reviews as noise, even though they are not useless. I think, "review bombs" are similar.

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

#87

Post by square_usual »

duskwuff wrote: post #82
square_usual wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> India has over a billion people with at least 500 million smartphone users, tens of millions isn't that out of the way. One out of every fifty or so people in a country the size of India getting involved enough in an Internet fight to download and rate an Android app is pretty hard to believe. 10M is a huge number, even for a big country like India.

Indians sure as heck don't need motivation to download TikTok; it was downloaded 323 million times in India over last year.

https://sensortower.com/blog/tiktok-revenue-downloads-2019

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

#88

Post by ketzu »

PunksATawnyFill wrote: post #68

YouTube and TikTok are cavalcades of human stupidity. Things aren't getting better.

Entertainment is not inherently stupid and videos on both platforms are not inherently entertainment or stupid. They mostly seem like a cross section of overall internet content (minus porn), which represents a large part of society as a whole.

For some reason people seem compelled to declare popular things they dislike as stupid, but that seems very unnecessary.

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

#89

Post by powerapple »

jariel wrote: post #58
Aperocky wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> chinese owned company (and therefore state-owned) lol. It's almost as if the entire reason that China is not a backward stagnant economy is because they allowed people to own things, on their own. But here we'll just close our eyes and pretend that didn't happen.

Not really, we apparently accept that Chinese companies are privately owned, that's the stated legality. That 'all large Chinese companies are controlled to a greater or lesser degree by the state' - is a matter of fact highly suppressed and obfuscated by the state for purposes of aggressie control and statecraft. Nobody cares that much that there's a degree of 'central planning' to grow the Chinese economy. People c…

So all the success of all Chinese companies are led by the CCP, why don't the world (west) give up? They seem to be a perfect leader for world economy :)

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

#90

Post by ketzu »

nwienert wrote: post #67
Gigablah wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's still possible to have personal judgement if a claim is true.

I assume many people would aggree that preventing bots from spamming a forum is not a form of censorship, even though it might be "technically true" in a sense that muddies the seriousnes of what we usually mean with censorship.

So having dissenting accounts deleted and the company claiming they are cleared as anti-spam does not mean anti-spam suddenly falls within the narrow definition of censorship some people use. It means the company is lying.

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