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Robinhood Play Store listing went from 329K reviews to 180K in few hours

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Re: Robinhood Play Store listing went from 329K reviews to 180K in few hours

#111

Post by smcl »

mulmen wrote: post #36
partiallypro wrote: post #8

How were these not overall real reviews? If they can't prove otherwise, this just entrenches the idea that big money is vastly more powerful than small voices. I honestly don't see how if this trend continues how things will end well. It's not just about Robinhood, etc, it's deplatforming, using AWS, etc as a weapon against smaller voices. I can't see this ending well.

You may think reviews are calculated as: SELECT app, AVG(stars) AS display_stars FROM customer_reviews GROUP BY app; It’s actually an ML algorithm that optimizes for revenue.

There’s a way to make that point without being insulting

Re: Robinhood Play Store listing went from 329K reviews to 180K in few hours

#112

Post by mandelbrotwurst »

fastball wrote: post #80
mulmen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may think reviews are calculated as: SELECT app, AVG(stars) AS display_stars FROM customer_reviews GROUP BY app; It’s actually an ML algorithm that optimizes for revenue.

Does RH have in-app purchases? Otherwise not sure how wiping negative reviews optimizes for revenue.

High ratings for apps in the store might help convince users that the store is worth using.

Or, even better, high ratings for apps from large corporations encourage them to support the continuation of your store's monopoly power.

Re: Robinhood Play Store listing went from 329K reviews to 180K in few hours

#113

Post by mulmen »

fastball wrote: post #80
mulmen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may think reviews are calculated as: SELECT app, AVG(stars) AS display_stars FROM customer_reviews GROUP BY app; It’s actually an ML algorithm that optimizes for revenue.

Does RH have in-app purchases? Otherwise not sure how wiping negative reviews optimizes for revenue.

If reviews don’t drive customer behavior why have them?

Re: Robinhood Play Store listing went from 329K reviews to 180K in few hours

#114

Post by kristopolous »

newacct583 wrote: post #22

HN has lost its mind. Everything is suddenly a conspiracy against the noble individual investor. Story after story voted up to the front page with minimal relevance. I mean, just think: were there really 100k legitimate Robinhood accounts that were blocked from an HME buy to justify a bad review? No. This is spam. It's just spam. People are angry, and this is a tool. And it's treated by Google exactly the way any oth…

This reminds me of the Trump 2016 campaign and the Bitcoin 2017 bubble. It's the same avalanche of bullshit social media strike tactics.

Re: Robinhood Play Store listing went from 329K reviews to 180K in few hours

#115

Post by simias »

partiallypro wrote: post #8

How were these not overall real reviews? If they can't prove otherwise, this just entrenches the idea that big money is vastly more powerful than small voices. I honestly don't see how if this trend continues how things will end well. It's not just about Robinhood, etc, it's deplatforming, using AWS, etc as a weapon against smaller voices. I can't see this ending well.

I think it's a tough decision to make. In general I understand that Google would prevent review bombing, since it can very easily be abused by social media mobs or competitors. The point of reviews is to give a genuine idea of how people on average like a given app. Reviem bombing completely distorts that, whether it be 1-star or 5-star reviews.

But here it's a pretty huge app, and the bombing is motivated by a real issue the users are having, so I think I agree with you that it was not necessarily the right decision.

As always the real problem is that tech giants are opaque in their behaviour. If we had clear guidelines for what constitutes "review bombing" there wouldn't really be an issue I think.

Re: Robinhood Play Store listing went from 329K reviews to 180K in few hours

#116

Post by camjohnson26 »

ironmagma wrote: post #79
JKCalhoun wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, really. Can anyone point to counter-examples?

There are a few -- Glassdoor, and Google reviews let you post bad reviews of businesses even if they have tons of money. That's not to say I disagree that big money runs things, just that it's not 100%.

Theranos HR posted one good review for every negative one to even out the score.

Re: Robinhood Play Store listing went from 329K reviews to 180K in few hours

#117

Post by 0-_-0 »

rory wrote: post #88
mulmen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may think reviews are calculated as: SELECT app, AVG(stars) AS display_stars FROM customer_reviews GROUP BY app; It’s actually an ML algorithm that optimizes for revenue.

Is this actually true? I feel so naive, I would have never guessed.

No

Re: Robinhood Play Store listing went from 329K reviews to 180K in few hours

#119

Post by xenocratus »

Hasnep wrote: post #92
ironmagma wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few -- Glassdoor, and Google reviews let you post bad reviews of businesses even if they have tons of money. That's not to say I disagree that big money runs things, just that it's not 100%.

Entirely anecdote, but I've heard of companies asking all their employees to give them good Glassdoor reviews.

There were stories here on HN (might dig them up) about how Glassdoor blackmails companies with "it would be a shame if your good reputation was ruined by some random bad reviews, eh?" and removes bad reviews for companies that hand over the dough :)

Re: Robinhood Play Store listing went from 329K reviews to 180K in few hours

#120

Post by pueblito »

teruakohatu wrote: post #83
centimeter wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more complicated than that. Jeff Bezos has a lot of money and relatively little political power. You can't just be rich; you also have to be in the right social groups. If money truly equaled political power, we'd look more like Hong Kong pre-1997 (and arguably pre-2020).

> relatively little political power He bought a newspaper. I would say he has plenty of political power.

To add to this, he owns the Washington Post, THE paper for DC
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