Live data from Hacker News

Google Deleted over 100k Negative Robinhood Reviews

reddit.com

51–60 of 91 posts

Re: Google Deleted over 100k Negative Robinhood Reviews

#51

Google should not curate reviews. If they do, they should clearly state this on the front page.

Well, there are spammers. It is alright to delete fake reviews by bots. But reviews from real people should stay. Even if they have stupid opinions and complain that the app does not work on their old mobile and give 1 star, when the app tells explicitely to have Android x+ or a fast mobile phone.

And in events like this, even more.

Re: Google Deleted over 100k Negative Robinhood Reviews

#52
post #23

It is totally obvious that the Google Play Store has fake reviews on every single app. I am not talking about bots; I'm pretty sure Google does it themselves. I have found apps which do absolutely nothing correctly and there was not a single positive review in the comments. Still, the app had a 3.9 rating.

I don't look at stars and app reviews anymore -it all feels completely useless and fake.

I look at reviews from different star ratings and then compare the wording of the review. Usually you can skim out the fakes and morons.

Re: Google Deleted over 100k Negative Robinhood Reviews

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are they fake reviews? The company has done something deeply unacceptable to its user base - why aren’t they entitled to update their reviews?

Maybe I'm underestimating both how active users are at reviewing apps and how many people use Robinhood, but I doubt there are over 100k people who updated their reviews because of yesterday. Personally I'd be shocked if the app had 100k reviews total last week. edit unless they offered basically real money to review the app, I haven't used it.

There were definitely at least 100,000 reviews submitted yesterday, based on my observation. However, there are huge numbers of people involved with this story - millions on the wsb subreddit alone. Bear in mind that most people don't submit reviews, but being angry at something is much more likely to cause someone to do so.

Re: Google Deleted over 100k Negative Robinhood Reviews

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are they fake reviews? The company has done something deeply unacceptable to its user base - why aren’t they entitled to update their reviews?

Maybe I'm underestimating both how active users are at reviewing apps and how many people use Robinhood, but I doubt there are over 100k people who updated their reviews because of yesterday. Personally I'd be shocked if the app had 100k reviews total last week. edit unless they offered basically real money to review the app, I haven't used it.

I don’t know how many users they have either, but re: whether it 100k reviews total last week.

Normally I think you could expect only a few percent of your users to leave reviews.

If you then piss off your whole user base collectively with actions that are unfair to them, then it is not a valid argument to say that because there are more reviews that the reviews cannot be real.

I am not saying that all of these 100k reviews are real. But I am saying that how many or few reviews they had before does not count because until you do something really bad or something extremely good 90-99% of users are not going to leave a review.

Re: Google Deleted over 100k Negative Robinhood Reviews

#55
I highly recommend how to read Valve's blog posts about review bombing. It's insightful and well done.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail...

https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail...

https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail...

Re: Google Deleted over 100k Negative Robinhood Reviews

#56
post #26

I hate Google with passion, for the things they do, but this is what they did for every brigade-rating that I can remember. And it makes sense. It's not anyone reviewing the app, it's people mass 1-starring the app because they decided to do so as a hive-mind. It's essentially fake reviews and I wouldn't be surprised if it's automated. Also, as far as I gather, people who wrote a human-like text review to go with the…

If a stock trading app manipulates the market by preventing purchases, while allowing selling, of certain stocks that are popular with a democratized hedge fund community, they deserve all the 1 star reviews they get. It's not just an useless app now, it's an actively dangerous scam app.

the thing is that robin hood it's not a trading app, you don't buy a share on your name, those shares are pooled and bought and selled off the official market.

If you want to invest, use a real broker, but then you will have to pay commissions.

Also, have in mind that even if they say that they are commission free, you pay with higher spreads, so if the transaction price is 1, robinhood will sell it to you by 1.02 and bough by 0.98, getting a margin from you each time you make a transaction with them.

Re: Google Deleted over 100k Negative Robinhood Reviews

#57
post #26

I hate Google with passion, for the things they do, but this is what they did for every brigade-rating that I can remember. And it makes sense. It's not anyone reviewing the app, it's people mass 1-starring the app because they decided to do so as a hive-mind. It's essentially fake reviews and I wouldn't be surprised if it's automated. Also, as far as I gather, people who wrote a human-like text review to go with the…

The hive mind effect enabled by Internet technologies is a far reaching and deadly serious problem.

Re: Google Deleted over 100k Negative Robinhood Reviews

#59
post #26

I hate Google with passion, for the things they do, but this is what they did for every brigade-rating that I can remember. And it makes sense. It's not anyone reviewing the app, it's people mass 1-starring the app because they decided to do so as a hive-mind. It's essentially fake reviews and I wouldn't be surprised if it's automated. Also, as far as I gather, people who wrote a human-like text review to go with the…

If a stock trading app manipulates the market by preventing purchases, while allowing selling, of certain stocks that are popular with a democratized hedge fund community, they deserve all the 1 star reviews they get. It's not just an useless app now, it's an actively dangerous scam app.

> If a stock trading app manipulates the market by preventing purchases

They're likely close to hitting their collateral limits with the clearing house[0]. During yesterday's 5-minute interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo, RH's CEO mentioned their collateral obligations (plus unnamed regulatory requirements) as the reason for preventing new positions in GME. Every trade creates a collateral obligation with the clearing house for 2 days, so if RH goes bankrupt while the trades are being settled, nobody loses. The amount of this collateral obligation is a function of the volatility of the stock. Lots of high-volatility trades in the middle of the 2-day settlement process eat up collateral very quickly. If RH runs out of collateral, none of their customers can trade until some of the pending trades finish clearing.

The reason for still allowing people to close positions is presumably because people would scream bloody murder even harder if they were suddenly unable to exit these high-volatility positions.

Collusion to manipulate markets, particularly in such an incredibly high-profile situation, seems unlikely. Whatever RH does, they know there will likely be investigations, so they're almost certainly on their best behavior right now.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25951475

Post reply on HN