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How were these not overall real reviews? If they can't prove otherwise, this just entrenches the idea that big money is vastly more powerful than small voices.
by partiallypro 6y ago
How were these not overall real reviews? If they can't prove otherwise, this just entrenches the idea that big money is vastly more powerful than small voices. I honestly don't see how if this trend continues how things will end well. It's not just about Robinhood, etc, it's deplatforming, using AWS, etc as a weapon against smaller voices. I can't see this ending well.
- mulmen 6y agoYou may think reviews are calculated as: SELECT app, AVG(stars) AS display_stars FROM customer_reviews GROUP BY app; It’s actually an ML algorithm that optimizes for revenue.
- dragosmocrii 6y agoThat's an excellent point
- DevKoala 6y agoI love this comment.
- fastball 6y agoDoes RH have in-app purchases? Otherwise not sure how wiping negative reviews optimizes for revenue.
- mandelbrotwurst 6y agoHigh ratings for apps in the store might help convince users that the store is worth using. Or, even better, high ratings for apps from large corporations encourage them to support the continuation of your store's monopoly power.
- simias 6y agoBut that's why there's no real need for manipulation. App store what highly rated apps and app makers want their apps to be highly rated so they use more or less dark patterns and incentives to incite users to leave good reviews. There's a massive selection bias at play which tends to naturally inflate review scores without any explicit fudging.
- mandelbrotwurst 6y agoI thought that at first, until I considered that user ratings might not actually map all that well to things like how long they spend in the apps, how likely spending time in an app is to increase their time spent in the store or on their device overall, and/or how much money they spend in these places.
- mulmen 6y agoIf reviews don’t drive customer behavior why have them?
- fastball 6y agoReviews that are accurate (hypothetically) help users make informed decisions and therefore enjoy using the store more.
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- rory 6y agoIs this actually true? I feel so naive, I would have never guessed.
- 0-_-0 6y agoNo
- smcl 6y agoThere’s a way to make that point without being insulting
- happytoexplain 6y agoYour bitterness robs your post of legitimacy.
- medicineman 6y agoNow THAT is truly adorable.
- simias 6y agoBeing condescending is not constructive. Can you substantiate your claim? I'm sure that there are many tweaks to the way apps are ranked, but I would expect that the rating itself would, indeed, mostly be a star average.
- 0-_-0 6y agoI'm pretty sure it is, with the addition that when they detect brigading of the rating in a certain time interval, they remove ratings made in that time interval. They will probably reenable ratings for the Robinhood app when things calm down, so if you want to give it a 1 star rating just wait a few weeks and try not to forget about it.
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- sulam 6y agoThis is not how most stores calculate the rating. Not Apple's, not Amazon's, and not Google's. They all have various "leans" on the score, that factor in other things besides just total_score divided by num_reviews.
- IMTDb 6y agoMy company has been scraping the apple app store and google play store using private reverse engineered api. We provide a wide range of services around those data which include reviews and ratings historical analysis and so on. I can confirm that the displayed rating on both stores is exactly the weighted average of valid reviews and ratings posted by users. No trickery there. The only caveat here is that both platform regularly invalidate posted reviews and ratings for various reasons (the user asked for it to be removed, apple/google has reasons to believe it was fraudulent/automated, ...). If a review/rating is removed, it won't be shown and won't be taken into account in the calculation. So the calculation is really along the lines of : > SELECT app, AVG(stars) AS display_stars FROM customer_reviews WHERE deleted=false GROUP BY app;
- p2t2p 6y agoThey'll just play themselves into regulation eventually. Once FTC comes after them the only people to blame for it are themselves.
- fastball 6y agoOptimistic.
- p2t2p 6y agoMay be, but if "split up big tech" becomes a viable path to being elected things may change _suddenly_
- cabalamat 6y agoLast year Elizabeth Warren called for Facebook to be split up. Facebook censored it. So things may change suddenly, but in one of two directions: 1. big tech being split up 2. big tech exercising the control they have over politics, by controlling speech, to prevent being split up The second option would of course be the final end of democracy in America.
- pueblito 6y agoThey are clearly not afraid of regulators anymore
- 650REDHAIR 6y ago
- TeMPOraL 6y agoMe neither. This month is crazy with very visible examples of blatant, unethical overreach of prominent companies. This thing absolutely adds up in people's consciousness. Sure, it decays over time, but right now, it adds up faster.
- 0-_-0 6y agoSomeone could become US president riding this public sentiment. Let's see if it decays in 4 years...
- thinkingemote 6y agoThey could use a catchy slogan like "drain the swamp"...
- chc 6y agoI think there are a couple of other recent presidential hopefuls who centered their messages much more around reducing the structural power of billionaires and large corporations.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago> who centered their messages much more around reducing the structural power of billionaires and large corporations. The problem is that there is a segment of the American voters who believe that if the current billionaires and large corporations would quit screwing them, they would become the billionaires and owners of the large corporations. As such they are all for screwing over the current crop of billionaires, but don’t want long lasting reduction in the structural power of billionaires.
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- lamontcg 6y agoSir, this is a site run by an investment fund, I'm afraid you've stepped a bit out of line there.
- 1996 6y ago> it's deplatforming, using AWS as a weapon against smaller voices. I can't see this ending well. This, so much - imagine you believe "they" stole the election, "they" got your favorite social media shut down (parler/gab/whatever), "they" blocked the buying of options, "they" then liquidated your position as the price predictably fail and you got margin called, you complained but "they" got your feedback deleted. Ouch. I can't see this ending well at all. The executive will have to be extremely careful with what they will enact. The climate was already tense, but this is making it explosive. I'd be extremely careful for all my 2021 forecast.
- XorNot 6y agoSo this is conflating some very different circumstances.
- 1996 6y agoDo you seriously believe the average person won't think like that? It's breaking trust at the society level. It can become extremely dangerous when a large percentage of the population don't believe there's a social contract anymore.
- 1123581321 6y agoThe point is that a widely perceived conflation will have material effects on the involved organizations and that the conflation will spread to new organizations with each new incident.
- 9985479945_ 6y agoIn all of these cases ‘They’ were within their rights.
- read_if_gay_ 6y agoSo? That is supposed to make it okay in people’s minds? I kinda doubt it.
- rurp 6y ago
- simias 6y agoI think it's a tough decision to make. In general I understand that Google would prevent review bombing, since it can very easily be abused by social media mobs or competitors. The point of reviews is to give a genuine idea of how people on average like a given app. Reviem bombing completely distorts that, whether it be 1-star or 5-star reviews. But here it's a pretty huge app, and the bombing is motivated by a real issue the users are having, so I think I agree with you that it was not necessarily the right decision. As always the real problem is that tech giants are opaque in their behaviour. If we had clear guidelines for what constitutes "review bombing" there wouldn't really be an issue I think.
- kerng 6y agoNot really. Many of people are rightfully upset and want to leave a 1 star review. It would be extremely inappropriate if Google removed my review. I think the app sucks if they can just prevent you from trading a stock and make you the bagholder in favor of large investors. Seems like a legitimate concern that hundred thousands of other people share - not some organized random prank. People are losing money as we speak.
- creato 6y agoIt seems like maybe the solution is not to remove reviews, but weight them somehow. 100k reviews left in 2 days probably shouldn't have the same weight as 100k reviews left over 2 years. Or a more sophisticated version of this would be to somehow cluster reviews based on the particular issue they are reporting.
- sthnblllII 6y agoRobinhood can kick people off, block trading certain stocks to help big players, etc. All ordinary people can do is leave a bad review and you want to take even that away. Why?
- alisonkisk 6y agoBecause spam isn't helpful to other ordinary people browsing the store.
- cabalamat 6y ago> I honestly don't see how if this trend continues how things will end well. It will likely end with ordinary people being really cynical about the motives of big tech, the financial services industry, the media, and the ruling class generally. It is likely that what these entities say will be generally disbelieved, even when they are telling the truth. Sooner or later another populist will come along who wants to shake up the system. The media industry have learnt from their promotion of Trump in 2016, and will not allow this. If necessary the ruling class will rig the election. Anyone who points out that the election was rigged will of course be deplatformed, on the pretext that they are "white supremacists" engaging in "hate speech".
- alvah 6y agoThat's not how it ends, that cuts off the story halfway through. Also, the next populist will likely make Trump look level-headed and restrained.
- cabalamat 6y ago> That's not how it ends, that cuts off the story halfway through. I think the end point is one of: - America comes to its senses, reforms, and becomes democratic - America becomes a China-like oligarchy and police state, with ubiquitous surveillance, and a big-tech-run social credit system to keep everyone in line - America bumbles along is the same fashion it has been doing, with things slowly deteriorating
- justforyou 6y ago>> it will likely end with ordinary people being really cynical about the motives of big tech, the financial services industry, the media, and the ruling class generally. That's how things were from the 70s up until the internet boom. It's going to take another paradim shift before the cynicism errodes.
- mhh__ 6y agoWhich deplatformings do you specifically refer to? The concern over them just seems way too tribal at the moment to be considered in league with the more serious allegations against Robinhood and the funds involved - that is big money. Wrt Parler specifically, I think a lot of the "solutions" (or sketches toward) on this site would quickly reveal that the optimal societal configuration is closer to what we have now than one would expect - with or without S230. Also, the wording of "using AWS" is almost libelously in need of a citation - who is doing it, and how do they have any sway over a company that is both absolutely enormous and not particularly woke?
- paulddraper 6y ago> Which deplatformings do you specifically refer to? President (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram), White House, Parler (Google Play, Apple, AWS), MyPillow guy, anyone who utters the phrase "stop the steal" on Facebook, Kyle Rittenhouse (Facebook, GoFundMe, Discover)
- Theory5 6y agoWow, it's almost like private companies don't want to be seen supporting terrible people who have done terrible things, such as damage a democracy by incompetence and malice. Or encouraged and emboldened extremists cumulating in an attempt to actually harm the leaders of a country, or illegally obtain a gun, shot several people, then was seen associating with extremists who regularly call for and perpetrate violence.
- tal8d 6y agoWell those private companies wouldn't be seen as "supporting" anybody, if they behaved with any level of consistency and transparency. It is a problem of their own making, with every virtue signal further compounding expectations. I suspect that the majority of people you hate probably have phone numbers and receive mail, but I don't believe that AT&T and UPS "support" them - because those companies don't pull these stupid stunts. Debanking is starting to get normalized... and the new liberal battle cry is "private companies!"
- alexfromapex 6y agoThese centralized app stores are part of this problem
- ArcVRArthur 6y agoThe internet has been going poorly for awhile. I don’t see how we’ll get off this track where the large crush and silence the small. I’m not sold on IPFS, GunDB, Zeronet, ect... My guess is federated XMPP or RSS might be a few of the only vestiges of resilient organization. Even Matrix has signalled they’ll begin looking into deplatforming. https://matrix.org/blog/2020/10/19/combating-abuse-in-matrix-without-backdoors/ https://matrix.org/blog/2020/10/19/combating-abuse-in-matrix... Sad times in cyberspace.
- DennisP 6y agoI read your Matrix link and it's not top-down deplatforming, it's user-driven moderation: > What if we had a standard way to let users themselves build up and share their own views of whether other users, messages, rooms, servers etc. are obnoxious or not? What if you could visualise and choose which filters to apply to your view of Matrix? The closest to actual deplatforming is: > Admins running servers in particular jurisdictions then have the option to enforce whatever rules they need on their servers But honestly, in a federated system I always assumed the server owners could do that. As long as it's not mandated from on high by the Matrix team, anyone can host whatever they want by setting up their own server.
- rationalfaith 6y agoAre you implying all the violent talk in parler is legitimate free speech?! Speech that incites violence and results in violence is not allowed.
- tinyhouse 6y agoBig money? What big money exactly? Do you really think Google care about RH and its money? They do it to prevent organized activities of rating manipulation. The RH case might be justified but Google cannot be the judge. If tomorrow the corner store across the street receives 100K reviews in 1 hour, Google would respond in a similar way.
- argomo 6y agoI don't see any overlap between Google's executive board and Robinhood, but it's a small world among power players at that level. Someone could have called in a favor (or been trying to curry one). Without more information, it's hard to say whether this was a good faith move by Google, reflexive algorithmic moderation, or another example of American extractionalism.
- tinyhouse 6y agoPlease, some common sense. Google is one of the wealthist and powerful companies in the world. RH is one app out of millions in their play store. No one at Google is stupid enough to do RH a favor. It's not the first time nor the last time they do something like like this. Their tos doesn't allow rating manipulation, which clearly happened here. They don't care if it justified or not.
- jquery 6y agoAll the insane conspiracy theories floating around, by people who mostly have no idea how trading/margin works, that this is just mean ol’ hedge funds trying to screw the little guy... I’m suddenly afraid of Trump 2.0, except he or she is gonna be a lot more competent and brutal. Jan 6 was just the warmup. There is so much wrath, envy, and greed out there, and so much willingness to believe whatever fits one’s preconceived notions of how the world works.
- amznthrowaway5 6y agoBut the giant hedge funds and billionaires aren't corrupt at all and we should all just believe them? Get real, most economic theory is all nonsense to cover for corruption and insider trading. Everyone can see how bad the economic inequality is getting, greed is mainly from the rich side, not from the so-called "conspiracy theorists"
- bilekas 6y agoAll of this very impressive, community, unpredictable, sentiment driven market has proven is that even the platform those cowboys and girls are trading on are owned. The claw's in deep.
- rpdillon 6y agoCompletely unmoderated reviews would be awful, which suggests moderation is necessary. Moderation requires judgment, and different people have different ideas about what good judgment looks like. Your question made me think about what a "real review" is. Should the person have used the app for more than a certain period of time? Do they need to have taken certain actions (make an account?) Different folks will draw lines in different places because reviews are just opinions, and there are no real credentials for having an opinion. I don't see a way to resolve this with a centralized model. Federated/distributed systems where the network is itself the filter seem more promising to me, even though they tend to come at the expense of usability.
- odessacubbage 6y agowhy do scores need to be simple? why not simply graph satisfaction over time and allow for demarcations like number of hours used. trying to apply a roger ebert scoring system to products and services that are ephemeral and ever-changing is largely meaningless. whether review bombing is legitimate or not, it at least always has a cause and that cause should be considered highly relevant purchasing information.
- rpdillon 6y agoTotally agree...ratings could be quite sophisticated. In the end, I suspect that sophisticated scoring system would still need to draw lines that some will disagree with, and we'd be back where we are now. Sophisticated scoring might also bring common critiques, like ratings being biased or opaque (or just confusing). I recall Netflix had a issue when they made their star rating a prediction of what you would rate it (based on your previous viewing habits). It confused a lot of people who thought it was simply the average star rating. They since switched to percent-match as a result, and dropped star-reviews in favor of thumbs-up/thumbs-down. Come to think of it, your suggestion may lead to something like percent-match for apps...though I suspect rating apps along dimensions the way Netflix does TV/movies may be tricky. Maybe different dimensions for different categories in the app store? I'm still intrigued by a distributed approach that filters opinion through the sieve of the social network...I think it has more promise than centralized rating systems that attract abuse.
- rvz 6y agoMeanwhile in the UK, the 'Robinhood equivalent', 'Trading 212' also is taking a hit with the instant 1 star reviews it has: [0] I'm expecting that Google will do the same here. [0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.avuscapital.trading212 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.avuscapita...
- tylerjwilk00 6y agoAnd the news pits us against one another because God forbid we all get along and work together. That would be the real threat.
- booleandilemma 6y agoCould a solution to this be a 3rd political party that unites people together somehow? Instead of fighting between democrats and republicans all the time.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y agoOK. Is your third political party pro gun or anti gun? I need to know before I can commit... see the problem yet? We’ve been divided with wedge issues.
- eternalban 6y ago> this just entrenches the idea that big money is vastly more powerful than small voices. An “idea”? It’s like saying there is an entrenched idea that the Earth goes around the Sun. The political class tried everything in the book to divide this nation. And in just one day, at least among the “retarded”, there is unity. No wonder they are all coming out of the woodwork to claim support for the retards. They are worried.
- aphextron 6y ago> How were these not overall real reviews? If they can't prove otherwise, this just entrenches the idea that big money is vastly more powerful than small voices. "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."
- itsdrewmiller 6y agoI mean, "this user never even downloaded this app" and "it got 100000% more reviews today than any other day" is probably a decent enough heuristic for removing fake reviews.