17 ms·

Robinhood now has a 1-Star rating on the Google Play Store

1177 points by sschueller 6y ago

mycentstoo 6y ago
Still 4.8 on the App Store though
- muleroid 6y ago
  I believe App Store updates a day later, so we're likely not seeing the results of any mass rating bombs.
  - mycentstoo 6y ago
    Ah that makes sense. I wasn't aware of that.
    - stickydink 6y ago
      App Store also allows you to reset the ratings when you launch an update
  - mrtksn 6y ago
    Not exactly a day later but the ratings tend to come with 6 to 12 hours delay. Sometimes more. Also, there's this strange thing that some of the ratings disappear and come back later or not.
  - prophesi 6y ago
    It can also take a while for a rating to go through. Once you tap the allotted stars you'd like to rate an app, you need to wait until you see the "Your feedback was submitted" modal to appear.
ArtTimeInvestor 6y ago
Just as I was wondering how many retail investors might be involved: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25947674 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25947674 From the number of Playstore votes it seems quite a few? Will be interesting to see if it stays that way. Or if they can somehow cheat their way out of it and get all recent ratings deleted or something. Any guesses?
- MPSimmons 6y ago
  If they keep selling people's stocks without their consent, then yeah, I'm pretty sure it'll stay until RH can buy better reviews. [edit] though there are some reports that the stocks were bought on margin, which makes it more(?) okay, I guess?
  - fennecfoxen 6y ago
    > though there are some reports that the stocks were bought on margin, which makes it more(?) okay, I guess? https://cdn.robinhood.com/assets/robinhood/legal/RHS%20Customer%20Margin%20and%20Short%20Account%20Agreement.pdf https://cdn.robinhood.com/assets/robinhood/legal/RHS%20Custo... 4. Liquidation. In the event of the death of the Customer, or in the event the margin in any account in which the Customer has an interest shall in either Robinhood’s or the Introducing Broker’s discretion become unsatisfactory to either Robinhood or the Introducing Broker, or be deemed insufficient by either Robinhood or the Introducing Broker, Robinhood is hereby authorized; (a) to sell any or all securities or other property which Robinhood may hold for the Customer (either individually or jointly with others); (b) to buy any or all securities and other property which may be short in such accounts; and/or (c) to cancel any open orders and to close any or all outstanding contracts; all without demand for margin or additional margin, notice of sale or purchase, or other notice or advertisement, and that any prior demand or notice shall not be a waiver of its rights provided herein. (emphasis added, and if you like that there's an arbitration agreement too.) https://cdn.robinhood.com/assets/robinhood/legal/RHS%20Margin%20Disclosure%20Statement.pdf https://cdn.robinhood.com/assets/robinhood/legal/RHS%20Margi... WE CAN SELL YOUR SECURITIES OR OTHER ASSETS WITHOUT CONTACTING YOU. Some investors mistakenly believe that their brokerage firm must contact them for a margin call to be valid, and that their firm cannot liquidate securities or other assets in their accounts to meet the call unless the firm has contacted them first. This is not the case. Although we may attempt to notify you of margin calls, we are not required to do so. However, even if we have contacted you and provided a specific date to meet a margin call, we can still take necessary steps to protect our financial interests, including immediately selling the securities without notice to you. We may forcibly liquidate all or part of your account without prior notice, regardless of your intent to satisfy a margin call, in order to protect your interests or our interests. YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO CHOOSE WHICH SECURITIES OR OTHER ASSETS IN YOUR ACCOUNT(S) ARE LIQUIDATED OR SOLD TO MEET A MARGIN CALL. Because the securities are collateral for the margin loan, we have the right to decide which security to sell in order to protect our interests. WE CAN INCREASE “HOUSE” MAINTENANCE MARGIN REQUIREMENTS AT ANY TIME AND ARE NOT REQUIRED TO PROVIDE YOU ADVANCE WRITTEN NOTICE. These changes in policy often take effect immediately and may result in the issuance of a maintenance margin call. Your failure to satisfy the call may require us to liquidate or sell securities in your account(s).
notjustanymike 6y ago
Well earned.
newfeatureok 6y ago
I wonder what percentage of Robinhood users hold GME - if it's more than 25% I'd say they're finished. If we assume 25% of users hold GME and 80% of GME holders will not return after this fiasco that's extremely significant IMO. Not to say that they'll cease to exist, but I doubt they'll remain the "#1 trading platform."
- jzoch 6y ago
  half of all americans invested in the market own some GME allegedly
  - sitzkrieg 6y ago
    in an etf or fund, maybe
- sschueller 6y ago
  Didn't they want to expand to Europe sometime soon? I guess that is up in the air now after the regulators see this.
- spikels 6y ago
  Can’t find the link but I think I read earlier today it was much higher than 25%.
- Miner49er 6y ago
  According to Motherboard it's more than half. https://twitter.com/motherboard/status/1354798244455395328 https://twitter.com/motherboard/status/1354798244455395328 EDIT: This is untrue, please refer to jaywalk's reply.
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    Can this really be true? It sounds so implausible that I'm not sure if I can take their tweeted word for it.
  - mafuyu 6y ago
    I think GME is one of the freebie stocks that Robinhood gives out as a referral bonus, so many of those users might just have had one stock incidentally.
sschueller 6y ago
Sort by newest ratings to see why.
sneak 6y ago
Can someone who knows more about such things than I explain to me why their weird response to the situation (halting buying, but still permitting selling) was deemed by them to be the best of their options (the other two obvious ones being to temporarily stop dealing in those securities entirely (halting buying and selling), or to continue letting people trade them as they had the previous day)? It's confusing to me. I'd think if they were being risk-averse or something they'd have stopped dealing in them entirely until the craziness passed. The "you can only sell, not buy" part seems... odd to me.
- Pasorrijer 6y ago
  In the simplest, likely potentially inaccurate explanation... Robinhood doesn't actually make the trades. They pay someone else to make the trades, add a small amount to the price, and that's how they get to 0$ trading price to the end user. The upstream party is refusing to do things, so Robinhood has no choice but to follow the rules that party set. That's like, way over simplified but gets to the gist [Edit cause spelling are hard]
  - outoftheabyss 6y ago
    Then why not communicate that in a diplomatic way. Their business and user base is at stake
    - Pasorrijer 6y ago
      When your marketing model is built entirely on sticking it to the man, how do you communicate that the man has you by the balls and you have no recourse because your business model is built on the man paying you off.
      - vharuck 6y ago
        You do this clearly, because if you don't give people a good explanation, they'll find one elsewhere. And the person giving that explanation probably doesn't care about preserving your reputation.
xxpor 6y ago
I'm surprised the app stores (well, at least the play store) don't have hysteresis built in to prevent mobbing the ratings, just in general.
- cromka 6y ago
  Why would they? They just need spam protection. If legitimate, independent users vote them down in thousands then why would an app need a protection?
  - ckastner 6y ago
    What would be something positive about allowing mobbing?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - ketzo 6y ago
      Maybe an app committed a sudden, devastating action against all of its users. That would be worth warning potential downloaders about, no?
      - ckastner 6y ago
        That (and the related sibling's comments) is a fair argument, but admittedly not what thought when I first pictured the term "mobbing". For anyone actually affected by Robinhood, I think leaving 1-star rating it is absolutely just. However, mobbing, to me, is when the random internet gets out its pitchforks and finds something to dogpile on, even though they might not have been affected personally.
        happytoexplain 6y ago
        >even though they might not have been affected personally It's unrealistic to imply that people shouldn't share opinions of behavior if they weren't directly and personally affected by that behavior. You're also making a large assumption that cases you would define as "mobbing" consist of a significant portion of people unaffected.
linksen 6y ago
Don't worry, google knows how to obscure these things. Just look at the voting on Biden's inaugural youtube videos. One day tens of thousands of down votes. Next day just a few thousand. source: https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-scrubs-thousands-of-dislikes-from-joe-biden-videos-on-official-white-house-channel/ https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-scrubs-thousands-of-dislik...
- rcruzeiro 6y ago
  Source?
  - linksen 6y ago
    https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-scrubs-thousands-of-dislikes-from-joe-biden-videos-on-official-white-house-channel/ https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-scrubs-thousands-of-dislik...
  - _jal 6y ago
    The source is their need to belong to a group that treats asserting a belief in this horse shit an in-group shibboleth. Much like religious groups that use exposure to non-believers as ways to discourage defection, ridicule from outsiders helps keep them in the fold.
    - linksen 6y ago
      The source was provided with links to the web archive. Please tell me how it is wrong.
      - kibwen 6y ago
        Youtube routinely scrubs views, likes, and dislikes from videos based on attempts to discern if they're fraudulent. You can't believe that this is evidence that Youtube is conspiring to support Biden unless you also believe that Youtube is conspiring to suppress BTS, the famous K-Pop boy band: https://www.quora.com/Why-did-YouTube-delete-views-from-BTS-Idol-music-video https://www.quora.com/Why-did-YouTube-delete-views-from-BTS-...
fireeyed 6y ago
There should be zero stars available for scamsters. Seriously this should be an option. Why should anyone give one star to a scamming firm Robbing Hood which has colluded with their backer Citadel. They have derogatory term for Retail Investors - Dumb Money. Now the 'Dumb Money' has figured out the the hedge funds'rigged game.
- afavour 6y ago
  > Now the 'Dumb Money' has figured out the the hedge funds'rigged game. After everyone threw a ton of money into the market the hedge funds control. “Dumb money” doesn’t feel like an inappropriate nickname.
- nostromo 6y ago
  This is a pet peeve of mine about star ratings. Visually, allowing 1 to 5 stars inflates the way ratings look, because the first star is always present, even for the worst products. Imagine if it was pie chart or a bar chart: the lowest rating would look like 20%, not 0%. Or imagine a product where 50% of people gave it the lowest rating (1 star) and the rest gave it the highest rating (5 stars). This would be presented as a 3/5 star item, which visually appears quite a bit better than its real rating (50%).
  - ttymck 6y ago
    Why can you not normalize the scale to 0-4 stars?
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    That's a consequence of the UI pattern - when you use the same widget as indicator and input, you need some way to represent "no vote yet" - plus, it would be hard to click/tap "no stars". It could be done better but alas, minimalism is the name of the game.
  - amelius 6y ago
    Yeah but if I see 0 stars the result is that I'm assuming that there were no votes.
anm89 6y ago
When retail in traders en masse decide that a trading platform is impinging upon their rights, the SEC should be obligated to open an investigation. Isn't this pretty much a major component of their intended purpose?
- alangibson 6y ago
  The SEC has led the charge of government agencies away from anything that could reasonably be called regulation. Take note of how often the term 'oversight' is used vs 'regulation' when these guys are talking.
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    Last I checked, the SEC doesn't pay very well compared to financial law / trading...
    - alangibson 6y ago
      There are lots of skilled but civic minded people in all the three letter agencies. The problem isn't people, it's ideology. Namely market fetishism and the assumption that if you're rich you just know better.
  - anm89 6y ago
    Yeah, I assume in reality, this is essentially the exact opposite what is happening. I would imagine the SEC is involved behind the scenes in coordinating these shutdowns. That feels like a huge violation of their stated intent though.
  - totalZero 6y ago
    > how often the term 'oversight' is used vs 'regulation' when these guys are talking. Is that how we're determining efficacy now...? Semantics? I take it that you like FINRA because of the R in the name.
    - alangibson 6y ago
grezql 6y ago
when such unjust is done to the mass, this may just spill over to violence. If I were RH/Melvin/Citadel, I'd watch over my shoulders. SEC needs to intervene quick
brador 6y ago
Could we see a class action? Is there a case?
- moolcool 6y ago
  https://twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1354839676482367488 https://twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1354839676482367488
- jandrese 6y ago
  The class action has already been filed against Robinhood. It remains to be seen if it gets any traction.
  - elliekelly 6y ago
    It won't. Everyone who has an account at RH has contractually agreed not to bring or participate in a class action suit and has contractually agreed to arbitration.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  The case appears to be filed here: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/50143052/nelson-v-robinhood-financial-llc/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/50143052/nelson-v-robin... Scanning the complaint quickly... it's not a strong case. The problem plaintiffs have is that the contract they signed lets Robinhood essentially refuse to trade if it wants to. In order to defeat that, you're going to have to argue that those contract provisions violate federal law and are therefore unenforceable. That's not really want the complaint does. Instead, it seems to argue that Robinhood's error was in failing to allow trades in GME in the first place, not in the reasoning for its failings. (At least they actually allege enough of this to potentially get discovery, which is better than some other complaints I've seen recently).
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jb775 6y ago
Serious question: Since RobinHood is a private company, does the "if you don't like it, you can build your own platform" argument apply here? Or does that only apply selectively when it benefits partisan politics? This is the natural evolution when censorship as we've recently seen is given a pass.
- Layke1123 6y ago
  I believe this is different because the SEC is involved, and if the SEC involved decides to rule that a broker cannot limit what stocks can be bought or sold because that would break the legal definition of what a brokerage is. Does anyone know the law well enough to know if this is indeed a violation of any statutes?
  - dcolkitt 6y ago
    There’s no law whatsoever that says a brokerage has to trade all stocks.
    - derision 6y ago
      In fact there are a number of stocks that robinhood doesn't list, namely CEFs and others
      - Layke1123 6y ago
        Sure, not listing a stock is entirely different than only allowing a user to sell a listed stock.
    - mathnmusic 6y ago
      But there's a law against manipulating stocks.
    - zionic 6y ago
      That's just it though, Robin hood didn't delist gamestop. They just decided arbitrarily that their users are only allowed to sell it. Coincidentally, this is a move that highly benefits a major partner of theirs.
robntheh00d 6y ago
Citadel reloaded shorts before RH cut off gme and the rest https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1354853920762253315?s=21 https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1354853920762253315?s=2...
- dcolkitt 6y ago
  Virtually every large multistrat fund is short GME now. This doesn’t really mean anything.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - robntheh00d 6y ago
    Citadel transacts Robinhood trades and is overstretched due to Melvins stupidity Setting a short position then cutting off trades is pretty textbook market manipulation
- Sohcahtoa82 6y ago
  "Just got a tip" has about as much clout as "I'm making this up"
rammy1234 6y ago
Gamestop is not supported on Robinhood. I get a message -- " This Stock is not supported on Robinhood"
- unanswered 6y ago
  > This stock is not supported on Robinhood. This is a jabberwocky sentence. It is syntactically correct but there is nothing in the real world to which it could be referring. Brokers do not "support" stocks.
  - no_one_ever 6y ago
    This is suggesting a technical support, not a rah-rah support.
  - pixxel 6y ago
    Sharing my lookup of jabberwocky. > n. Nonsensical speech or writing. > adj. meaningless, worthless > adj. absurd, nonsense, non-sensical From Wiki: "Jabberwocky" is a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll about the killing of a creature named "the Jabberwock". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky Wonderful word.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- zionic 6y ago
  Oh it's "supported" if you try to sell it. They only stop you from buying.
  - rammy1234 6y ago
    why should they stop ? are they really allowed to ?
babypuncher 6y ago
It's going to be real funny when all the lemmings pumping up GME's price lose all their money.
bufferoverflow 6y ago
I predict Google will whitewash their rating within a month.
- bagacrap 6y ago
  what incentive do they have to do that?
  - askl56 6y ago
    https://twitter.com/TheQuartering/status/1354909724869853188 https://twitter.com/TheQuartering/status/1354909724869853188 They already have
    - bufferoverflow 6y ago
      And that's why I don't trust Google reviews. This is not they first time they've done that.
99_00 6y ago
Better to have 1 star and stay open than to be shutdown one way or another. Music, taxis, retail, newspapers, politics and others have been disrupted by technology and the incumbents have suffered. The establishment players have all seen this and they aren't going to let it happen again to them. They'll let technology in but only the way they want. And now that deplatforming companies and powerful from credit-card, cloud providers, app stores, communications is normal and accepted they have more power and control than ever. If I was robinhood I would do the same thing. Standing up for a principle is only going to get you shutdown and have everyone hate you after the fake news vilifies you and drags you through the gutter.
coliveira 6y ago
I think it is ridiculous that Robinhood took the matters in their own hands to halt trading on GME. If anyone had to do this was the SEC. It is just outrageous.
- brink 6y ago
  The Parler incident sent a message across the tech industry that this kind of behavior is acceptable. Whether you liked Parler or not, the lynching of Parler was ultimately a loss for everyone for the precedent that it set.
  - afavour 6y ago
    I’m honestly very confused why people keep trying to draw a parallel between Parler and Robinhood. Beyond “big companies can do whatever they want” there really isn’t much in the way of comparison. And big companies doing what they want is something we’ve known about since around the time big companies first started to exist.
    - zionic 6y ago
      The comparison is not between Parler and Robinbood, it's a comparison between companies that canceled Parler and Robinhood: Sweeping, unilateral, unaccountable power of institutions we had not appreciated the power of previously.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Parler (deplatforming, service) | | Discord (deplatforming, WSB) | | Robin Hood (functional ban, WSB) There similarities are not perfect, but enough to draw an analogy.
      - afavour 6y ago
        I’ll agree that there are similarities between Parler and WSB Discord issue (how much hate speech is tolerated on your platform is a decision made by your service provider, not you) but the WSB Robinhood issue is something else altogether.
alangibson 6y ago
One of the good things I see coming out of Robinhood blocking trading, Twitter and Reddit booting problematic users, Parler getting vaporized, etc. is a sudden realization amongst people of just how easily major parts of their lives can be instantly turned off by intermediaries. My hope is that this will drive a reformist movement around digital rights (speech, commerce, etc.) As well as a movement from platforms to protocols.
- bluetwo 6y ago
  Until you get rid of forced arbitration clauses, consumer rights are an illusion.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Anti-trust law is a far cleaner way to approach that, with far fewer unintended consequences.
  - karlmcguire 6y ago
    Yea, because that's been working great thus far.
    - theptip 6y ago
      Well no, the US hasn't been enforcing its existing antitrust laws very rigorously, that's the point the GP is making. E.g. see https://www.antitrustinstitute.org/work-product/antitrust-enforcement-report/ https://www.antitrustinstitute.org/work-product/antitrust-en... Rather than proposing a new technological solution to the problem ("platforms to protocols") which may work but is unproven, we could simply restart the use of existing tools that have been proven to work. This has the advantage of being a strategy that can be explained to non-technical folks.
      - jjk166 6y ago
        If I have a car that worked great 50 years ago but haven't been able to turn it on since the 70s when my neighbor destroyed the engine, I would not call that a proven, working car. The "existing tools" have been proven to have a major weakness, namely they can be neutered by regulatory capture. Unless you can get everyone to magically forget how they circumvented the rules last time, you can't simply restart using them.
dumbfounder 6y ago
On iTunes it is still rated 4.8, but they have a lot more ratings overall (2.4m vs 335k).
jb775 6y ago
Time for everyone to cash in their 401k's (aka the system where the middle class gives their life savings to the elites). If there's this level of blatant corruption, who really thinks they won't get screwed out of their retirement savings in a few decades?
dheera 6y ago
EDIT: I was wrong, this was removed because it was a repost. However I wish the mods would say why it was removed. Justin Kan posted a tweet about this. I also tried to screenshot and post it to r/wallstreetbets but it got deleted by mods. The mods of r/wallstreetbets themselves are complicit in this. https://www.reddit.com/r/Wallstreetbetsnew/comments/l75z6o/my_p_ost_about_c_itadel_and_r_obinhood_got_remove/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Wallstreetbetsnew/comments/l75z6o/m...
- Armisael16 6y ago
  Your post was removed because it was like the thousandth time it had been posted. It's literally the #2 post on the subreddit right now: https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l747eg/citadel_reloaded_their_shorts_before_they_told/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l747eg/cita...
  - dheera 6y ago
    Okay, I was wrong, but in that case the UI should have said why it was removed.
- l3s2d 6y ago
  Your post got removed because it's a repost: https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l747eg/citadel_reloaded_their_shorts_before_they_told/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l747eg/cita... Don't spread misinformation.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ttt0 6y ago
  I get that people are pissed, but this is exactly the same thing that the Qanon idiots were doing - going along with the wildest theories and calling anyone who questioned them complicit. By doing so, they destroyed their entire movement and the cause they were fighting for.
ashtonkem 6y ago
I smelled a rat in Robinhood back when they first showed up. When something goes from paid to free, the only appropriate response is to question how that happened, and what changes in motivation now exist.
- ziftface 6y ago
  I'm learning recently to be a lot more critical about this sort of thing than I used to be.
mkl95 6y ago
Seems fair. The app has rendered itself useless.
rvnx 6y ago
Not only they cheated their own users, they also artificially manipulated the market and that eventually defrauded users of other brokers who legitimately expected a buy pressure coming from Robinhood users. So, 1-star is even too much, jail time would be preferred.
- ziftface 6y ago
  I don't know what the next step is, but the fact that pretty much everyone knows that there will be no jail time despite them openly committing crimes to defraud so many people isn't going to lead us somewhere good.
Triv888 6y ago
I didn't down-vote them yet, because I used to use only the web app and haven't use them in a while, but I will make sure to down-vote.
MisterBastahrd 6y ago
Not allowing users to purchase shares and also selling owned shares against the wishes of users will have that effect.
fireeyed 6y ago
Apple is blocking ratings of Robinhood on AppStore. Coincidence much ? "Its a big club and you ain't in it" - George Carlin
- donohoe 6y ago
  Don't think so. I just rated it now. It seems to work. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/robinhood-investing-for-all/id938003185 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/robinhood-investing-for-all/id...
  - TecoAndJix 6y ago
    If you sort by most recent the last posting was yesterday (mobile)
- themodelplumber 6y ago
  Opinion: With such wild swings in emotion in the markets right now in general, you can't expect investment app ratings to be even remotely objective. IMO Apple is making proactive moves to protect their store's rating system reputation, such as it is. I've used RobinHood since 2016 (not my only brokerage) and the app continues to be fine. It's not a race car, it's more like a family sedan. The company has been reasonably good at messaging and a number of other brokerages also halted buying of $gme, $nok, etc. So not only is RobinHood not getting a fair shake (we haven't even heard their side of things), but other brokerages are getting _way_ more than what's fair for them given that they did the exact same thing.
  - wmeredith 6y ago
    "Apple is making proactive moves to protect their store's rating system reputation" Ah, that's a good one.
    - themodelplumber 6y ago
      I know, crazy point I'm sure, but even if you have a bad reputation, you should work to keep it from getting worse. RH app reviews right now are going to be way too emotional, and they'll stay there no matter what RH does in the coming days. This will take Apple's reputation down a notch on both ends--app developer and app reviewer.
cabaalis 6y ago
Alpaca sent me a notice this morning that they are also restricting trades. It's network behavior like this that is troubling.
Triv888 6y ago
If everyone in the U.S. would buy only one share of GME, that would probably be enough to screw a few billionaires.
- LittlePeter 6y ago
  There are 67.5m GME shares outstanding. So yeah, 300m+ people competing to own single share would drive GME up.
systematical 6y ago
Brigaded. They are toast. Everyone I know with a RH account is going to close it.
bigmattystyles 6y ago
I'm not sure if this is new as of today - but to close (deactivate) your robinhood account, you need 1. No outstanding trades 2. a $0.00 balance 3. Contact support and (optionally?) give a reason (1) and (2) make sense, but is (3) new? I wonder if there is a mass exodus - there should be.
- pram 6y ago
  I'd wait to get your tax docs before you do this though, lol
  - bigmattystyles 6y ago
    They explicitly state those will still be available even if your account is deactivated.
lucasmullens 6y ago
It's not even that it rounds to 1 star, it's actually 1.0 stars (according to the aria-label on the HTML). The difference between a 1.4 and 1.0 is huge in terms of what percent of reviews are actually favorable.
tomcam 6y ago
Still too high
jxf 6y ago
This is interesting in that it provokes the question of what an app's rating "means". Clearly, if you were getting the app because you expected to be able to trade GME and you can't, then this is a good signal not to get the app. But not all "protest votes" of this sort may be equally good signals.
- bmcahren 6y ago
  I would argue most of the 1 star reviews are users like myself feeling betrayed who are speaking with their dollar, share, and review votes by leaving the app entirely.
- dpedu 6y ago
  Is the algorithm that does or doesn't promote apps on the app store able to differentiate between "protest votes" and "real" votes?
- peheje 6y ago
  Agree. I think the answer is it means whatever Google wants it to mean for this particular app.
shadykiller 6y ago
I had already transferred all my stocks from Robinhood to my company provided Fidelity account sometime back after reading about their shady practices last year: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2020-321 https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2020-321
devops000 6y ago
They could have blamed the SEC, and the users would have hated the SEC instead of them.
jackfoxy 6y ago
Most of the other brokerages (Schwab, Etrade, and TD Ameritrade, but NOT Fidelity and Vanguard according to the reports I am getting) are participating. According to the rumor on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/ClassActionRobinHood/comments/l723kf/robinhood_insider_information/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ClassActionRobinHood/comments/l723k... the call came from the White House.
- rcstank 6y ago
  I'm able to purchase these securities on ETrade just fine. Edit: Just called E*TRADE. They now don't allow GME nor AMC trades unless you're closing your position.
- 542458 6y ago
  I wouldn’t give that rumour any serious thought considering there’s literally nothing backing it up and it mostly just feeds what people already want to believe. People are pointing out in the comments that some of the details don’t line up, like him being based in the wrong city and him overhearing conversations while WFH.
  - kibwen 6y ago
    For real, despite three years of QAnon people are still failing miserably to apply any incredulity about whatever they read on the internet. That it affirms their beliefs is all that matters, never mind its veracity.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- caseysoftware 6y ago
  The CEO of the Nasdaq suggested it yesterday: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/topstocks/nasdaq-ceo-suggests-halt-to-trading-to-allow-big-investors-to-e2-80-98recalibrate-their-positions-e2-80-99-to-combat-reddit-users/ar-BB1d9gUA https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/topstocks/nasdaq-ceo-suggest...
- jklein11 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
robot1 6y ago
I honestly feel bad for all the employees, especially the early ones with equity that were looking forward to cashing out after the IPO - now they have to deal with immensely negative PR and federal investigations.
- rumblerock 6y ago
  For this reason I imagine that the first unconfirmed leak mentioned in another post will be far from the last. As if WSB vs. hedge funds wasn't a crazy enough story itself, the sequel to The Big Short is pretty much writing itself as the other players in the system expose exactly where they stand. Regulators and the Federal Government chapters incoming...
gigatexal 6y ago
Bowing to the whims of established trading firms to protect said firms being squeezed by a crazy army of day traders is a great way to ruin the rep your “Robinhood” trading app stands for. Score one for the little guy. I’m hoping RobinHood gets sued out of existence and many of these hedge funds burn. The industry’s response to this is stupid and classist: “we can’t have randos making money...” as irrational as the system is it is working as is.
g9yuayon 6y ago
Robinhood phrased their message as if it was for user's own good. Moralizing everything beyond protocol and rules and law has serious consequences. It does nothing but driving people cynical. Didn't the elites learn the stories of USSR political jokes, the stories of how East Germans (and ancient Chinese people) talked to each other via eye contacts only? It's not hard to guess what will happen when enough number of people stop trusting the system. For that matter, I'm so glad that AOC and Td Cruz can agree with each other to probe Robinhood's practice.
- shostack 6y ago
  Any links to good reading on the eye contact communication? That sounds really interesting.
  - g9yuayon 6y ago
    I don't know if there's any communication protocol with eye contact. People were so afraid of persecution that they used only eye contact to exchange feelings, or so I read. One may argue that it's different this time aforementioned persecution came from the governments. Well, it's worth remembering that it was ordinary people who voluntarily snitched each other during those horrible times, believing that they were on moral high ground. Or just ask Chinese: who beat professors and school principals to death? Who thought that business owners deserved to starve to death? Who thought eating flesh of person was righteous because that person was born in a middle-class family? It looks many Chinese have learned their lessons from their own painful history, yet Americans didn't even care about history at all.
csours 6y ago
This reminds me of how casinos can kick people out for any reason or no reason at all. Treat meme stocks like a trip to the casino: don't wager more than you can lose.
interdrift 6y ago
Good.
sitzkrieg 6y ago
a bunch of idiots acting like children because they don't know how clearing works, cool
donohoe 6y ago
You're all free to rate it on iOS too... https://apps.apple.com/us/app/robinhood-investing-for-all/id938003185 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/robinhood-investing-for-all/id...
- gshakir 6y ago
  Already did
misiti3780 6y ago
Is there actual proof they colluded with Citadel, or is that just speculation? I'm very confused?
- MauranKilom 6y ago
  What would that proof look like? Even if it was 100% what happened, I wouldn't hold my breath to see actual proof.
  - misiti3780 6y ago
    Proof to me is more than Justin Kan tweeting out he heard that Citadel and Robinhood are working together ...
    - MauranKilom 6y ago
      I fully agree that the tweet is not proof. I fear that nothing will come forward in any case. My point is: It could be true and we'd never see proof. That doesn't mean we should assume it to be true. Neither does lack of proof imply that it has to be untrue. In other words, we will probably never know for sure. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
dang 6y ago
For pointers to other vertices of this story graph, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25933543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25933543. The current thread is paginated like all the other big threads (to spare our poor server—yes, we're working on it). If you want to see all the comments you'll need to click through the More links at the bottom, or like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25947697&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25947697&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25947697&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25947697&p=3 (and so on)
- dang 6y ago
  (This is a stub reply so I can collapse the various comments responding to this, so as not to distract too much from the topic at hand. (Sorry, non-JS users.))
  - imdsm 6y ago
    The HN server has been so faithful to us. I hope it's feeling better soon.
  - anton96 6y ago
    You can also add YouTube-dl and GitHub.
    - dang 6y ago
      You mean to comments about Robinhood on those sites? Links would be helpful. Edit: I don't think I'm following you.
  - dj_mc_merlin 6y ago
    Thank you!
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    What exactly is the issue? (if you can share)
noja 6y ago
Isn't there a front-running side to this story? With the front-runner pocketing billions? Isn't this how Robin Hood makes money? Anyone know?
partiallypro 6y ago
The reason why this happened is that their clearing house stopped fulfilling their orders (totally out of their control,) but Robinhood bungled this so badly, I honestly wonder if they'll ever recover. WeBull had to do the same thing but they have a clear reason rather than "protecting investors" etc.
- itsyaboi 6y ago
  Riddle me this, who is Robinhood's clearing house?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - partiallypro 6y ago
    I do agree Citadel, which I believe helped out one of the hedge funds in trouble form the short squeeze, being the clearing house is a "moral hazard" and a conflict of interest.
avipars 6y ago
What about on the apple app store?
kimsant 6y ago
Once again, the power of a phone call to the right person, asking for the right thing and offering the right compensation.
pelasaco 6y ago
today early in the morning, they had a 4.8 rating https://twitter.com/VincentMarcus/status/1354812744738828294/photo/1 https://twitter.com/VincentMarcus/status/1354812744738828294...
- archon810 6y ago
  That isn't the Play Store.
Aperocky 6y ago
I feel like this action from Robin Hood saved a lot of retail trader from self harm. A lot of people are clinging to the hope that whatever came out of shorts covering their position being false. Whereas given the volume of the previous days it's highly likely they've already gone. Whoever goes in at this point is likely going to end up losing everything.
- shrimpx 6y ago
  More importantly it saved hedge funds like Melvin and Citadel form self-harm. They aggressively shorted these stocks into the ground, looking to make billions. If the prices stay up or keep going up, they stand to lose billions and even go out of business. If you look at r/wallstreetbets, only a few people seem to have invested more than a couple of tens of thousands. The guy who came up with this idea to profit off of short squeeze seems to have invested only 53k. Most other people invested a few hundred or a few thousand. Also, people on r/wallstreetbets routinely show screenshots of their losses. It's kind of preposterous to move forward assuming these people don't know what they're doing, and Robinhood saved them... These trading platforms are blatantly intervening to save the hedge funds, not the Reddit traders. Government may have a say in it, too, because they want market stability. And if these hedge have to sell their long positions to cover shorts, it could put a big dent in the market and even cause a larger scale crash.
  - bagacrap 6y ago
    how would that cause a crash? Retail (and less shady institutions) will buy more aapl when it dips and all that's happened at the end of the day is a big transfer of wealth from institutions to retail (and less shady institutions).
    - shrimpx 6y ago
      To cover their short position at a huge loss, funds would have to sell their long positions, which is basically a big sell-off. That may be just temporary. But in a deep bubble it could trigger a mass selloff and a recession.
xmly 6y ago
The only reason they still have one start is because 1 is minimum.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
AdamN 6y ago
That sound you hear is the evaporation of billions in pre-IPO Robinhood equity vanishing based on both a poor decision (to disallow buying of a stock that others could still buy) and worse, poor execution on their site that didn't make it clear how narrow the blocking was. Those customers who have left Robinhood will never come back and it will take years to recover, if ever.
gshakir 6y ago
It has five stars on Apple store, that’s quite a difference
matkoniecz 6y ago
Rating is displayed as 2 and half star for me.
ardy42 6y ago
It looks like it's ~2.75 stars now.
voodootrucker 6y ago
I just went there and it was 3.5 https://ibb.co/9pxhD4V https://ibb.co/9pxhD4V
- mijoharas 6y ago
  I see it as 4* right now. Could it be to do with region? (I'm looking at it from the uk.)
  - KyleBerezin 6y ago
    I also do 4 and I am on the US. Perhaps Google is deleting/ignoring reviews.
0-_-0 6y ago
Not anymore, Google deleted the bad reviews.
zain_saqer 6y ago
It has 4 stars now

1177 points by sschueller 6y ago

mycentstoo 6y ago

Still 4.8 on the App Store though

muleroid 6y ago
I believe App Store updates a day later, so we're likely not seeing the results of any mass rating bombs.
- mycentstoo 6y ago
  Ah that makes sense. I wasn't aware of that.
  - stickydink 6y ago
    App Store also allows you to reset the ratings when you launch an update
- mrtksn 6y ago
  Not exactly a day later but the ratings tend to come with 6 to 12 hours delay. Sometimes more. Also, there's this strange thing that some of the ratings disappear and come back later or not.
- prophesi 6y ago
  It can also take a while for a rating to go through. Once you tap the allotted stars you'd like to rate an app, you need to wait until you see the "Your feedback was submitted" modal to appear.

ArtTimeInvestor 6y ago

Just as I was wondering how many retail investors might be involved: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25947674 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25947674 From the number of Playstore votes it seems quite a few? Will be interesting to see if it stays that way. Or if they can somehow cheat their way out of it and get all recent ratings deleted or something. Any guesses?

MPSimmons 6y ago
If they keep selling people's stocks without their consent, then yeah, I'm pretty sure it'll stay until RH can buy better reviews. [edit] though there are some reports that the stocks were bought on margin, which makes it more(?) okay, I guess?
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  > though there are some reports that the stocks were bought on margin, which makes it more(?) okay, I guess? https://cdn.robinhood.com/assets/robinhood/legal/RHS%20Customer%20Margin%20and%20Short%20Account%20Agreement.pdf https://cdn.robinhood.com/assets/robinhood/legal/RHS%20Custo... 4. Liquidation. In the event of the death of the Customer, or in the event the margin in any account in which the Customer has an interest shall in either Robinhood’s or the Introducing Broker’s discretion become unsatisfactory to either Robinhood or the Introducing Broker, or be deemed insufficient by either Robinhood or the Introducing Broker, Robinhood is hereby authorized; (a) to sell any or all securities or other property which Robinhood may hold for the Customer (either individually or jointly with others); (b) to buy any or all securities and other property which may be short in such accounts; and/or (c) to cancel any open orders and to close any or all outstanding contracts; all without demand for margin or additional margin, notice of sale or purchase, or other notice or advertisement, and that any prior demand or notice shall not be a waiver of its rights provided herein. (emphasis added, and if you like that there's an arbitration agreement too.) https://cdn.robinhood.com/assets/robinhood/legal/RHS%20Margin%20Disclosure%20Statement.pdf https://cdn.robinhood.com/assets/robinhood/legal/RHS%20Margi... WE CAN SELL YOUR SECURITIES OR OTHER ASSETS WITHOUT CONTACTING YOU. Some investors mistakenly believe that their brokerage firm must contact them for a margin call to be valid, and that their firm cannot liquidate securities or other assets in their accounts to meet the call unless the firm has contacted them first. This is not the case. Although we may attempt to notify you of margin calls, we are not required to do so. However, even if we have contacted you and provided a specific date to meet a margin call, we can still take necessary steps to protect our financial interests, including immediately selling the securities without notice to you. We may forcibly liquidate all or part of your account without prior notice, regardless of your intent to satisfy a margin call, in order to protect your interests or our interests. YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO CHOOSE WHICH SECURITIES OR OTHER ASSETS IN YOUR ACCOUNT(S) ARE LIQUIDATED OR SOLD TO MEET A MARGIN CALL. Because the securities are collateral for the margin loan, we have the right to decide which security to sell in order to protect our interests. WE CAN INCREASE “HOUSE” MAINTENANCE MARGIN REQUIREMENTS AT ANY TIME AND ARE NOT REQUIRED TO PROVIDE YOU ADVANCE WRITTEN NOTICE. These changes in policy often take effect immediately and may result in the issuance of a maintenance margin call. Your failure to satisfy the call may require us to liquidate or sell securities in your account(s).

notjustanymike 6y ago

Well earned.

newfeatureok 6y ago

I wonder what percentage of Robinhood users hold GME - if it's more than 25% I'd say they're finished. If we assume 25% of users hold GME and 80% of GME holders will not return after this fiasco that's extremely significant IMO. Not to say that they'll cease to exist, but I doubt they'll remain the "#1 trading platform."

jzoch 6y ago
half of all americans invested in the market own some GME allegedly
- sitzkrieg 6y ago
  in an etf or fund, maybe
sschueller 6y ago
Didn't they want to expand to Europe sometime soon? I guess that is up in the air now after the regulators see this.
spikels 6y ago
Can’t find the link but I think I read earlier today it was much higher than 25%.
Miner49er 6y ago
According to Motherboard it's more than half. https://twitter.com/motherboard/status/1354798244455395328 https://twitter.com/motherboard/status/1354798244455395328 EDIT: This is untrue, please refer to jaywalk's reply.
- im3w1l 6y ago
  Can this really be true? It sounds so implausible that I'm not sure if I can take their tweeted word for it.
- mafuyu 6y ago
  I think GME is one of the freebie stocks that Robinhood gives out as a referral bonus, so many of those users might just have had one stock incidentally.

sschueller 6y ago

Sort by newest ratings to see why.

sneak 6y ago

Can someone who knows more about such things than I explain to me why their weird response to the situation (halting buying, but still permitting selling) was deemed by them to be the best of their options (the other two obvious ones being to temporarily stop dealing in those securities entirely (halting buying and selling), or to continue letting people trade them as they had the previous day)? It's confusing to me. I'd think if they were being risk-averse or something they'd have stopped dealing in them entirely until the craziness passed. The "you can only sell, not buy" part seems... odd to me.

Pasorrijer 6y ago
In the simplest, likely potentially inaccurate explanation... Robinhood doesn't actually make the trades. They pay someone else to make the trades, add a small amount to the price, and that's how they get to 0$ trading price to the end user. The upstream party is refusing to do things, so Robinhood has no choice but to follow the rules that party set. That's like, way over simplified but gets to the gist [Edit cause spelling are hard]
- outoftheabyss 6y ago
  Then why not communicate that in a diplomatic way. Their business and user base is at stake
  - Pasorrijer 6y ago
    When your marketing model is built entirely on sticking it to the man, how do you communicate that the man has you by the balls and you have no recourse because your business model is built on the man paying you off.
    - vharuck 6y ago
      You do this clearly, because if you don't give people a good explanation, they'll find one elsewhere. And the person giving that explanation probably doesn't care about preserving your reputation.

xxpor 6y ago

I'm surprised the app stores (well, at least the play store) don't have hysteresis built in to prevent mobbing the ratings, just in general.

cromka 6y ago
Why would they? They just need spam protection. If legitimate, independent users vote them down in thousands then why would an app need a protection?
- ckastner 6y ago
  What would be something positive about allowing mobbing?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ketzo 6y ago
    Maybe an app committed a sudden, devastating action against all of its users. That would be worth warning potential downloaders about, no?
    - ckastner 6y ago
      That (and the related sibling's comments) is a fair argument, but admittedly not what thought when I first pictured the term "mobbing". For anyone actually affected by Robinhood, I think leaving 1-star rating it is absolutely just. However, mobbing, to me, is when the random internet gets out its pitchforks and finds something to dogpile on, even though they might not have been affected personally.
      - happytoexplain 6y ago
        >even though they might not have been affected personally It's unrealistic to imply that people shouldn't share opinions of behavior if they weren't directly and personally affected by that behavior. You're also making a large assumption that cases you would define as "mobbing" consist of a significant portion of people unaffected.

linksen 6y ago

Don't worry, google knows how to obscure these things. Just look at the voting on Biden's inaugural youtube videos. One day tens of thousands of down votes. Next day just a few thousand. source: https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-scrubs-thousands-of-dislikes-from-joe-biden-videos-on-official-white-house-channel/ https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-scrubs-thousands-of-dislik...

rcruzeiro 6y ago
Source?
- linksen 6y ago
  https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-scrubs-thousands-of-dislikes-from-joe-biden-videos-on-official-white-house-channel/ https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-scrubs-thousands-of-dislik...
- _jal 6y ago
  The source is their need to belong to a group that treats asserting a belief in this horse shit an in-group shibboleth. Much like religious groups that use exposure to non-believers as ways to discourage defection, ridicule from outsiders helps keep them in the fold.
  - linksen 6y ago
    The source was provided with links to the web archive. Please tell me how it is wrong.
    - kibwen 6y ago
      Youtube routinely scrubs views, likes, and dislikes from videos based on attempts to discern if they're fraudulent. You can't believe that this is evidence that Youtube is conspiring to support Biden unless you also believe that Youtube is conspiring to suppress BTS, the famous K-Pop boy band: https://www.quora.com/Why-did-YouTube-delete-views-from-BTS-Idol-music-video https://www.quora.com/Why-did-YouTube-delete-views-from-BTS-...

fireeyed 6y ago

There should be zero stars available for scamsters. Seriously this should be an option. Why should anyone give one star to a scamming firm Robbing Hood which has colluded with their backer Citadel. They have derogatory term for Retail Investors - Dumb Money. Now the 'Dumb Money' has figured out the the hedge funds'rigged game.

afavour 6y ago
> Now the 'Dumb Money' has figured out the the hedge funds'rigged game. After everyone threw a ton of money into the market the hedge funds control. “Dumb money” doesn’t feel like an inappropriate nickname.
nostromo 6y ago
This is a pet peeve of mine about star ratings. Visually, allowing 1 to 5 stars inflates the way ratings look, because the first star is always present, even for the worst products. Imagine if it was pie chart or a bar chart: the lowest rating would look like 20%, not 0%. Or imagine a product where 50% of people gave it the lowest rating (1 star) and the rest gave it the highest rating (5 stars). This would be presented as a 3/5 star item, which visually appears quite a bit better than its real rating (50%).
- ttymck 6y ago
  Why can you not normalize the scale to 0-4 stars?
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  That's a consequence of the UI pattern - when you use the same widget as indicator and input, you need some way to represent "no vote yet" - plus, it would be hard to click/tap "no stars". It could be done better but alas, minimalism is the name of the game.
- amelius 6y ago
  Yeah but if I see 0 stars the result is that I'm assuming that there were no votes.

anm89 6y ago

When retail in traders en masse decide that a trading platform is impinging upon their rights, the SEC should be obligated to open an investigation. Isn't this pretty much a major component of their intended purpose?

alangibson 6y ago
The SEC has led the charge of government agencies away from anything that could reasonably be called regulation. Take note of how often the term 'oversight' is used vs 'regulation' when these guys are talking.
- ethbr0 6y ago
  Last I checked, the SEC doesn't pay very well compared to financial law / trading...
  - alangibson 6y ago
    There are lots of skilled but civic minded people in all the three letter agencies. The problem isn't people, it's ideology. Namely market fetishism and the assumption that if you're rich you just know better.
- anm89 6y ago
  Yeah, I assume in reality, this is essentially the exact opposite what is happening. I would imagine the SEC is involved behind the scenes in coordinating these shutdowns. That feels like a huge violation of their stated intent though.
- totalZero 6y ago
  > how often the term 'oversight' is used vs 'regulation' when these guys are talking. Is that how we're determining efficacy now...? Semantics? I take it that you like FINRA because of the R in the name.
  - alangibson 6y ago

grezql 6y ago

when such unjust is done to the mass, this may just spill over to violence. If I were RH/Melvin/Citadel, I'd watch over my shoulders. SEC needs to intervene quick

brador 6y ago

Could we see a class action? Is there a case?

moolcool 6y ago
https://twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1354839676482367488 https://twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1354839676482367488
jandrese 6y ago
The class action has already been filed against Robinhood. It remains to be seen if it gets any traction.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  It won't. Everyone who has an account at RH has contractually agreed not to bring or participate in a class action suit and has contractually agreed to arbitration.
jcranmer 6y ago
The case appears to be filed here: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/50143052/nelson-v-robinhood-financial-llc/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/50143052/nelson-v-robin... Scanning the complaint quickly... it's not a strong case. The problem plaintiffs have is that the contract they signed lets Robinhood essentially refuse to trade if it wants to. In order to defeat that, you're going to have to argue that those contract provisions violate federal law and are therefore unenforceable. That's not really want the complaint does. Instead, it seems to argue that Robinhood's error was in failing to allow trades in GME in the first place, not in the reasoning for its failings. (At least they actually allege enough of this to potentially get discovery, which is better than some other complaints I've seen recently).

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jb775 6y ago

Serious question: Since RobinHood is a private company, does the "if you don't like it, you can build your own platform" argument apply here? Or does that only apply selectively when it benefits partisan politics? This is the natural evolution when censorship as we've recently seen is given a pass.

Layke1123 6y ago
I believe this is different because the SEC is involved, and if the SEC involved decides to rule that a broker cannot limit what stocks can be bought or sold because that would break the legal definition of what a brokerage is. Does anyone know the law well enough to know if this is indeed a violation of any statutes?
- dcolkitt 6y ago
  There’s no law whatsoever that says a brokerage has to trade all stocks.
  - derision 6y ago
    In fact there are a number of stocks that robinhood doesn't list, namely CEFs and others
    - Layke1123 6y ago
      Sure, not listing a stock is entirely different than only allowing a user to sell a listed stock.
  - mathnmusic 6y ago
    But there's a law against manipulating stocks.
  - zionic 6y ago
    That's just it though, Robin hood didn't delist gamestop. They just decided arbitrarily that their users are only allowed to sell it. Coincidentally, this is a move that highly benefits a major partner of theirs.

robntheh00d 6y ago

Citadel reloaded shorts before RH cut off gme and the rest https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1354853920762253315?s=21 https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1354853920762253315?s=2...

dcolkitt 6y ago
Virtually every large multistrat fund is short GME now. This doesn’t really mean anything.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- robntheh00d 6y ago
  Citadel transacts Robinhood trades and is overstretched due to Melvins stupidity Setting a short position then cutting off trades is pretty textbook market manipulation
Sohcahtoa82 6y ago
"Just got a tip" has about as much clout as "I'm making this up"

rammy1234 6y ago

Gamestop is not supported on Robinhood. I get a message -- " This Stock is not supported on Robinhood"

unanswered 6y ago
> This stock is not supported on Robinhood. This is a jabberwocky sentence. It is syntactically correct but there is nothing in the real world to which it could be referring. Brokers do not "support" stocks.
- no_one_ever 6y ago
  This is suggesting a technical support, not a rah-rah support.
- pixxel 6y ago
  Sharing my lookup of jabberwocky. > n. Nonsensical speech or writing. > adj. meaningless, worthless > adj. absurd, nonsense, non-sensical From Wiki: "Jabberwocky" is a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll about the killing of a creature named "the Jabberwock". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky Wonderful word.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
zionic 6y ago
Oh it's "supported" if you try to sell it. They only stop you from buying.
- rammy1234 6y ago
  why should they stop ? are they really allowed to ?

babypuncher 6y ago

It's going to be real funny when all the lemmings pumping up GME's price lose all their money.

bufferoverflow 6y ago

I predict Google will whitewash their rating within a month.

bagacrap 6y ago
what incentive do they have to do that?
- askl56 6y ago
  https://twitter.com/TheQuartering/status/1354909724869853188 https://twitter.com/TheQuartering/status/1354909724869853188 They already have
  - bufferoverflow 6y ago
    And that's why I don't trust Google reviews. This is not they first time they've done that.

99_00 6y ago

Better to have 1 star and stay open than to be shutdown one way or another. Music, taxis, retail, newspapers, politics and others have been disrupted by technology and the incumbents have suffered. The establishment players have all seen this and they aren't going to let it happen again to them. They'll let technology in but only the way they want. And now that deplatforming companies and powerful from credit-card, cloud providers, app stores, communications is normal and accepted they have more power and control than ever. If I was robinhood I would do the same thing. Standing up for a principle is only going to get you shutdown and have everyone hate you after the fake news vilifies you and drags you through the gutter.

coliveira 6y ago

I think it is ridiculous that Robinhood took the matters in their own hands to halt trading on GME. If anyone had to do this was the SEC. It is just outrageous.

brink 6y ago
The Parler incident sent a message across the tech industry that this kind of behavior is acceptable. Whether you liked Parler or not, the lynching of Parler was ultimately a loss for everyone for the precedent that it set.
- afavour 6y ago
  I’m honestly very confused why people keep trying to draw a parallel between Parler and Robinhood. Beyond “big companies can do whatever they want” there really isn’t much in the way of comparison. And big companies doing what they want is something we’ve known about since around the time big companies first started to exist.
  - zionic 6y ago
    The comparison is not between Parler and Robinbood, it's a comparison between companies that canceled Parler and Robinhood: Sweeping, unilateral, unaccountable power of institutions we had not appreciated the power of previously.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Parler (deplatforming, service) | | Discord (deplatforming, WSB) | | Robin Hood (functional ban, WSB) There similarities are not perfect, but enough to draw an analogy.
    - afavour 6y ago
      I’ll agree that there are similarities between Parler and WSB Discord issue (how much hate speech is tolerated on your platform is a decision made by your service provider, not you) but the WSB Robinhood issue is something else altogether.

alangibson 6y ago

One of the good things I see coming out of Robinhood blocking trading, Twitter and Reddit booting problematic users, Parler getting vaporized, etc. is a sudden realization amongst people of just how easily major parts of their lives can be instantly turned off by intermediaries. My hope is that this will drive a reformist movement around digital rights (speech, commerce, etc.) As well as a movement from platforms to protocols.

bluetwo 6y ago
Until you get rid of forced arbitration clauses, consumer rights are an illusion.
ashtonkem 6y ago
Anti-trust law is a far cleaner way to approach that, with far fewer unintended consequences.
- karlmcguire 6y ago
  Yea, because that's been working great thus far.
  - theptip 6y ago
    Well no, the US hasn't been enforcing its existing antitrust laws very rigorously, that's the point the GP is making. E.g. see https://www.antitrustinstitute.org/work-product/antitrust-enforcement-report/ https://www.antitrustinstitute.org/work-product/antitrust-en... Rather than proposing a new technological solution to the problem ("platforms to protocols") which may work but is unproven, we could simply restart the use of existing tools that have been proven to work. This has the advantage of being a strategy that can be explained to non-technical folks.
    - jjk166 6y ago
      If I have a car that worked great 50 years ago but haven't been able to turn it on since the 70s when my neighbor destroyed the engine, I would not call that a proven, working car. The "existing tools" have been proven to have a major weakness, namely they can be neutered by regulatory capture. Unless you can get everyone to magically forget how they circumvented the rules last time, you can't simply restart using them.

dumbfounder 6y ago

On iTunes it is still rated 4.8, but they have a lot more ratings overall (2.4m vs 335k).

jb775 6y ago

Time for everyone to cash in their 401k's (aka the system where the middle class gives their life savings to the elites). If there's this level of blatant corruption, who really thinks they won't get screwed out of their retirement savings in a few decades?

dheera 6y ago

EDIT: I was wrong, this was removed because it was a repost. However I wish the mods would say why it was removed. Justin Kan posted a tweet about this. I also tried to screenshot and post it to r/wallstreetbets but it got deleted by mods. The mods of r/wallstreetbets themselves are complicit in this. https://www.reddit.com/r/Wallstreetbetsnew/comments/l75z6o/my_p_ost_about_c_itadel_and_r_obinhood_got_remove/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Wallstreetbetsnew/comments/l75z6o/m...

Armisael16 6y ago
Your post was removed because it was like the thousandth time it had been posted. It's literally the #2 post on the subreddit right now: https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l747eg/citadel_reloaded_their_shorts_before_they_told/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l747eg/cita...
- dheera 6y ago
  Okay, I was wrong, but in that case the UI should have said why it was removed.
l3s2d 6y ago
Your post got removed because it's a repost: https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l747eg/citadel_reloaded_their_shorts_before_they_told/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l747eg/cita... Don't spread misinformation.
deleted 6y ago
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ttt0 6y ago
I get that people are pissed, but this is exactly the same thing that the Qanon idiots were doing - going along with the wildest theories and calling anyone who questioned them complicit. By doing so, they destroyed their entire movement and the cause they were fighting for.

ashtonkem 6y ago

I smelled a rat in Robinhood back when they first showed up. When something goes from paid to free, the only appropriate response is to question how that happened, and what changes in motivation now exist.

ziftface 6y ago
I'm learning recently to be a lot more critical about this sort of thing than I used to be.

mkl95 6y ago

Seems fair. The app has rendered itself useless.

rvnx 6y ago

Not only they cheated their own users, they also artificially manipulated the market and that eventually defrauded users of other brokers who legitimately expected a buy pressure coming from Robinhood users. So, 1-star is even too much, jail time would be preferred.

ziftface 6y ago
I don't know what the next step is, but the fact that pretty much everyone knows that there will be no jail time despite them openly committing crimes to defraud so many people isn't going to lead us somewhere good.

Triv888 6y ago

I didn't down-vote them yet, because I used to use only the web app and haven't use them in a while, but I will make sure to down-vote.

MisterBastahrd 6y ago

Not allowing users to purchase shares and also selling owned shares against the wishes of users will have that effect.

fireeyed 6y ago

Apple is blocking ratings of Robinhood on AppStore. Coincidence much ? "Its a big club and you ain't in it" - George Carlin

donohoe 6y ago
Don't think so. I just rated it now. It seems to work. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/robinhood-investing-for-all/id938003185 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/robinhood-investing-for-all/id...
- TecoAndJix 6y ago
  If you sort by most recent the last posting was yesterday (mobile)
themodelplumber 6y ago
Opinion: With such wild swings in emotion in the markets right now in general, you can't expect investment app ratings to be even remotely objective. IMO Apple is making proactive moves to protect their store's rating system reputation, such as it is. I've used RobinHood since 2016 (not my only brokerage) and the app continues to be fine. It's not a race car, it's more like a family sedan. The company has been reasonably good at messaging and a number of other brokerages also halted buying of $gme, $nok, etc. So not only is RobinHood not getting a fair shake (we haven't even heard their side of things), but other brokerages are getting _way_ more than what's fair for them given that they did the exact same thing.
- wmeredith 6y ago
  "Apple is making proactive moves to protect their store's rating system reputation" Ah, that's a good one.
  - themodelplumber 6y ago
    I know, crazy point I'm sure, but even if you have a bad reputation, you should work to keep it from getting worse. RH app reviews right now are going to be way too emotional, and they'll stay there no matter what RH does in the coming days. This will take Apple's reputation down a notch on both ends--app developer and app reviewer.

cabaalis 6y ago

Alpaca sent me a notice this morning that they are also restricting trades. It's network behavior like this that is troubling.

Triv888 6y ago

If everyone in the U.S. would buy only one share of GME, that would probably be enough to screw a few billionaires.

LittlePeter 6y ago
There are 67.5m GME shares outstanding. So yeah, 300m+ people competing to own single share would drive GME up.

systematical 6y ago

Brigaded. They are toast. Everyone I know with a RH account is going to close it.

bigmattystyles 6y ago

I'm not sure if this is new as of today - but to close (deactivate) your robinhood account, you need 1. No outstanding trades 2. a $0.00 balance 3. Contact support and (optionally?) give a reason (1) and (2) make sense, but is (3) new? I wonder if there is a mass exodus - there should be.

pram 6y ago
I'd wait to get your tax docs before you do this though, lol
- bigmattystyles 6y ago
  They explicitly state those will still be available even if your account is deactivated.

lucasmullens 6y ago

It's not even that it rounds to 1 star, it's actually 1.0 stars (according to the aria-label on the HTML). The difference between a 1.4 and 1.0 is huge in terms of what percent of reviews are actually favorable.

tomcam 6y ago

Still too high

jxf 6y ago

This is interesting in that it provokes the question of what an app's rating "means". Clearly, if you were getting the app because you expected to be able to trade GME and you can't, then this is a good signal not to get the app. But not all "protest votes" of this sort may be equally good signals.

bmcahren 6y ago
I would argue most of the 1 star reviews are users like myself feeling betrayed who are speaking with their dollar, share, and review votes by leaving the app entirely.
dpedu 6y ago
Is the algorithm that does or doesn't promote apps on the app store able to differentiate between "protest votes" and "real" votes?
peheje 6y ago
Agree. I think the answer is it means whatever Google wants it to mean for this particular app.

shadykiller 6y ago

I had already transferred all my stocks from Robinhood to my company provided Fidelity account sometime back after reading about their shady practices last year: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2020-321 https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2020-321

devops000 6y ago

They could have blamed the SEC, and the users would have hated the SEC instead of them.

jackfoxy 6y ago

Most of the other brokerages (Schwab, Etrade, and TD Ameritrade, but NOT Fidelity and Vanguard according to the reports I am getting) are participating. According to the rumor on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/ClassActionRobinHood/comments/l723kf/robinhood_insider_information/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ClassActionRobinHood/comments/l723k... the call came from the White House.

rcstank 6y ago
I'm able to purchase these securities on ETrade just fine. Edit: Just called E*TRADE. They now don't allow GME nor AMC trades unless you're closing your position.
542458 6y ago
I wouldn’t give that rumour any serious thought considering there’s literally nothing backing it up and it mostly just feeds what people already want to believe. People are pointing out in the comments that some of the details don’t line up, like him being based in the wrong city and him overhearing conversations while WFH.
- kibwen 6y ago
  For real, despite three years of QAnon people are still failing miserably to apply any incredulity about whatever they read on the internet. That it affirms their beliefs is all that matters, never mind its veracity.
deleted 6y ago
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caseysoftware 6y ago
The CEO of the Nasdaq suggested it yesterday: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/topstocks/nasdaq-ceo-suggests-halt-to-trading-to-allow-big-investors-to-e2-80-98recalibrate-their-positions-e2-80-99-to-combat-reddit-users/ar-BB1d9gUA https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/topstocks/nasdaq-ceo-suggest...
jklein11 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

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robot1 6y ago

I honestly feel bad for all the employees, especially the early ones with equity that were looking forward to cashing out after the IPO - now they have to deal with immensely negative PR and federal investigations.

rumblerock 6y ago
For this reason I imagine that the first unconfirmed leak mentioned in another post will be far from the last. As if WSB vs. hedge funds wasn't a crazy enough story itself, the sequel to The Big Short is pretty much writing itself as the other players in the system expose exactly where they stand. Regulators and the Federal Government chapters incoming...

gigatexal 6y ago

Bowing to the whims of established trading firms to protect said firms being squeezed by a crazy army of day traders is a great way to ruin the rep your “Robinhood” trading app stands for. Score one for the little guy. I’m hoping RobinHood gets sued out of existence and many of these hedge funds burn. The industry’s response to this is stupid and classist: “we can’t have randos making money...” as irrational as the system is it is working as is.

g9yuayon 6y ago

Robinhood phrased their message as if it was for user's own good. Moralizing everything beyond protocol and rules and law has serious consequences. It does nothing but driving people cynical. Didn't the elites learn the stories of USSR political jokes, the stories of how East Germans (and ancient Chinese people) talked to each other via eye contacts only? It's not hard to guess what will happen when enough number of people stop trusting the system. For that matter, I'm so glad that AOC and Td Cruz can agree with each other to probe Robinhood's practice.

shostack 6y ago
Any links to good reading on the eye contact communication? That sounds really interesting.
- g9yuayon 6y ago
  I don't know if there's any communication protocol with eye contact. People were so afraid of persecution that they used only eye contact to exchange feelings, or so I read. One may argue that it's different this time aforementioned persecution came from the governments. Well, it's worth remembering that it was ordinary people who voluntarily snitched each other during those horrible times, believing that they were on moral high ground. Or just ask Chinese: who beat professors and school principals to death? Who thought that business owners deserved to starve to death? Who thought eating flesh of person was righteous because that person was born in a middle-class family? It looks many Chinese have learned their lessons from their own painful history, yet Americans didn't even care about history at all.

csours 6y ago

This reminds me of how casinos can kick people out for any reason or no reason at all. Treat meme stocks like a trip to the casino: don't wager more than you can lose.

interdrift 6y ago

Good.

sitzkrieg 6y ago

a bunch of idiots acting like children because they don't know how clearing works, cool

donohoe 6y ago

You're all free to rate it on iOS too... https://apps.apple.com/us/app/robinhood-investing-for-all/id938003185 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/robinhood-investing-for-all/id...

gshakir 6y ago
Already did

misiti3780 6y ago

Is there actual proof they colluded with Citadel, or is that just speculation? I'm very confused?

MauranKilom 6y ago
What would that proof look like? Even if it was 100% what happened, I wouldn't hold my breath to see actual proof.
- misiti3780 6y ago
  Proof to me is more than Justin Kan tweeting out he heard that Citadel and Robinhood are working together ...
  - MauranKilom 6y ago
    I fully agree that the tweet is not proof. I fear that nothing will come forward in any case. My point is: It could be true and we'd never see proof. That doesn't mean we should assume it to be true. Neither does lack of proof imply that it has to be untrue. In other words, we will probably never know for sure. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

dang 6y ago

For pointers to other vertices of this story graph, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25933543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25933543. The current thread is paginated like all the other big threads (to spare our poor server—yes, we're working on it). If you want to see all the comments you'll need to click through the More links at the bottom, or like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25947697&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25947697&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25947697&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25947697&p=3 (and so on)

dang 6y ago
(This is a stub reply so I can collapse the various comments responding to this, so as not to distract too much from the topic at hand. (Sorry, non-JS users.))
- imdsm 6y ago
  The HN server has been so faithful to us. I hope it's feeling better soon.
- anton96 6y ago
  You can also add YouTube-dl and GitHub.
  - dang 6y ago
    You mean to comments about Robinhood on those sites? Links would be helpful. Edit: I don't think I'm following you.
- dj_mc_merlin 6y ago
  Thank you!
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  What exactly is the issue? (if you can share)

noja 6y ago

Isn't there a front-running side to this story? With the front-runner pocketing billions? Isn't this how Robin Hood makes money? Anyone know?

partiallypro 6y ago

The reason why this happened is that their clearing house stopped fulfilling their orders (totally out of their control,) but Robinhood bungled this so badly, I honestly wonder if they'll ever recover. WeBull had to do the same thing but they have a clear reason rather than "protecting investors" etc.

itsyaboi 6y ago
Riddle me this, who is Robinhood's clearing house?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- partiallypro 6y ago
  I do agree Citadel, which I believe helped out one of the hedge funds in trouble form the short squeeze, being the clearing house is a "moral hazard" and a conflict of interest.

avipars 6y ago

What about on the apple app store?

kimsant 6y ago

Once again, the power of a phone call to the right person, asking for the right thing and offering the right compensation.

pelasaco 6y ago

today early in the morning, they had a 4.8 rating https://twitter.com/VincentMarcus/status/1354812744738828294/photo/1 https://twitter.com/VincentMarcus/status/1354812744738828294...

archon810 6y ago
That isn't the Play Store.

Aperocky 6y ago

I feel like this action from Robin Hood saved a lot of retail trader from self harm. A lot of people are clinging to the hope that whatever came out of shorts covering their position being false. Whereas given the volume of the previous days it's highly likely they've already gone. Whoever goes in at this point is likely going to end up losing everything.

shrimpx 6y ago
More importantly it saved hedge funds like Melvin and Citadel form self-harm. They aggressively shorted these stocks into the ground, looking to make billions. If the prices stay up or keep going up, they stand to lose billions and even go out of business. If you look at r/wallstreetbets, only a few people seem to have invested more than a couple of tens of thousands. The guy who came up with this idea to profit off of short squeeze seems to have invested only 53k. Most other people invested a few hundred or a few thousand. Also, people on r/wallstreetbets routinely show screenshots of their losses. It's kind of preposterous to move forward assuming these people don't know what they're doing, and Robinhood saved them... These trading platforms are blatantly intervening to save the hedge funds, not the Reddit traders. Government may have a say in it, too, because they want market stability. And if these hedge have to sell their long positions to cover shorts, it could put a big dent in the market and even cause a larger scale crash.
- bagacrap 6y ago
  how would that cause a crash? Retail (and less shady institutions) will buy more aapl when it dips and all that's happened at the end of the day is a big transfer of wealth from institutions to retail (and less shady institutions).
  - shrimpx 6y ago
    To cover their short position at a huge loss, funds would have to sell their long positions, which is basically a big sell-off. That may be just temporary. But in a deep bubble it could trigger a mass selloff and a recession.

xmly 6y ago

The only reason they still have one start is because 1 is minimum.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

AdamN 6y ago

That sound you hear is the evaporation of billions in pre-IPO Robinhood equity vanishing based on both a poor decision (to disallow buying of a stock that others could still buy) and worse, poor execution on their site that didn't make it clear how narrow the blocking was. Those customers who have left Robinhood will never come back and it will take years to recover, if ever.

gshakir 6y ago

It has five stars on Apple store, that’s quite a difference

matkoniecz 6y ago

Rating is displayed as 2 and half star for me.

ardy42 6y ago

It looks like it's ~2.75 stars now.

voodootrucker 6y ago

I just went there and it was 3.5 https://ibb.co/9pxhD4V https://ibb.co/9pxhD4V

mijoharas 6y ago
I see it as 4* right now. Could it be to do with region? (I'm looking at it from the uk.)
- KyleBerezin 6y ago
  I also do 4 and I am on the US. Perhaps Google is deleting/ignoring reviews.

0-_-0 6y ago

Not anymore, Google deleted the bad reviews.

zain_saqer 6y ago

It has 4 stars now