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

indiatoday.in

71–80 of 108 posts

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

#71

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 kind of the state of Indian news media of this generation. All outlets are crazy for making even mundane coverage as dramatic as possible to compete.

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

#72

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…

> 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.

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

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but in addition, not providing any transparency to the content creator, or any ability to appeal the decision or re-instate the video in my opinion is unforgivable.

Yeah, the entire process of dealing with exceptions (or indeed, anything that involves human judgement) is atrocious at YouTube, and has been for many years. jwz wrote about this years ago as well (and there are many more stories): https://www.jwz.org/blog/2014/10/youtubes-joke-of-a-fair-use... That being said, I feel too many people fail to appreciate the problems YouTube is facing and are too quick to simply shout…

That link calls me a brogrammer man child... My ego is hurt.

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

#75

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…

> 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.

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

#76

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…

> 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.

What? Zoom is literally the only solution where I've send a link to people with almost no experience regarding computers and it just works.

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

#77

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.

Does it work like this for all apps?

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

#78

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.

What? Zoom is literally the only solution where I've send a link to people with almost no experience regarding computers and it just works.

They have to install software by default.

Meet and Whereby, on the other hand, require nothing but a modern browser.

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

#79

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…

afair it's also something steam does for games: after some time remove votes from the accumulated vote when they seem from reviewbombing. https://kotaku.com/valve-says-it-will-remove-off-topic-revie...

I think the motivation is legitimate as the votes do not reflect the actual app/game.

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

#80

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.

Does it work like this for all apps?

I guess so
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