7 ms·

Honest question: why does Google care here? They don't really have a stake in the GME situation, with no short or long positions (I'm assuming). They aren't tha

by cmdli 6y ago

Honest question: why does Google care here? They don't really have a stake in the GME situation, with no short or long positions (I'm assuming). They aren't that connected to Wall Street companies. Why protect Robinhood at all?

alexanderh 6y ago
Money. These people are fixing to lose to much, they'll pay their way out any way they can while they still can.
- harikb 6y ago
  I get RH might be paying money to cleanup play store reviews, but how much is enough to justify the negative PR ? There is another angle though - may be RH or some higher power is threatening to sue Google if they didn't help cleanup based on their own terms, which might have clause of active sabotage - I am sure they claim this is one such event.
  - bonoboTP 6y ago
    That's not how these things work. Google is interested in the status quo. So much turmoil around digital platforms angering the owner class is bad for their business, more tech regulation etc. They don't want any drama, just fun and consumption. RH didn't pay anything. Google knows what to do. The interests are way deeper than some pocket change moving around...
whoisjuan 6y ago
> They aren't that connected to Wall Street companies. Lol. Sure they aren't.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Maybe, but Google are in a different league to these funds.
  - TheCraiggers 6y ago
    Google the corporation? Sure. Many of the managers and workers at Google? Quite likely have a stake in what goes down on Wall Street.
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      That's more plausible but still relatively unlikely if you consider both how Google usually operate and who'd have clearance to pull the trigger if this is what is being suggested. On balance, I really think this is just an automated system that's being conservative. Would you be in any way surprised that Google would have such a thing looking for big impulses in activity?
    - ummonk 6y ago
      I doubt it. I'm at Facebook not Google but most of us employees are supporting the WSB side of this.
      - sthnblllII 6y ago
        Most of the employees are not executives.
  - erezsh 6y ago
    *Alphabet
optimalsolver 6y ago
They don't like their platform being manipulated by organized downvoting. Not rocket science.
- fastball 6y ago
  Manipulated? I just gave a 1-star review on the iOS app store and am currently pulling all my money out of my RH account, because I don't like how RH is behaving. People all thinking something is shit is not manipulation, its just collective agreement.
  - kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
    To play the Devil's advocate here, my personal intuition is that App reviews should be for how the apps perform, and shouldn't be used as proxy for reviewing those businesses. If the app is buggy or broken or whatever, it makes sense to give a low rating. I am not sure it makes equal sense if people suddenly realize they don't like the company who has made the app.
    - fastball 6y ago
      That's a fair point, and I agree with you – I hate it when reviews don't give me (the reader) an accurate picture of the experience I'll have with this app. Two problems though: 1. That's not how people treat reviews (people will leave a positive review if they love the business but the app is crap), so it's misleading to only enforce such an ideal here, with negative reviews. 2. In this case, the business effectively is the app, at least from the user's perspective. The app wouldn't let me even look at GME/AMC today, much less buy it. That's not what I want from a stock trading app, because it's an annoying experience that leaves a sour taste in my mouth, so 1-star it is.
    - olyjohn 6y ago
      What if an app functions perfectly, but doesn't do what it promises? That's what seems to be happening here.
    - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
glenvdb 6y ago
This reminds me of the "review bombing" debacles that have plagued Steam over recent years. Valve implemented a system to detect these patterns and discard the ratings. Valve had no particular stake in the games being "bombed", but they do have a stake in the trust people have in their platform. People want to know if a game is truly good or bad and not have to wonder if it was the victim of some kind of vendetta. At the time no one strongly protested the move by Valve, but in the context of this situation with Google, Robinhood, and WSB it seems to have hit a particular nerve.
- TheCraiggers 6y ago
  I don't think they remove the reviews outright though. They detect it, label it, and offer both a "recent reviews" and "all-time reviews", as well as a visual graph to show you the trend. A far better approach than just removing the reviews outright if you ask me.
- teruakohatu 6y ago
  There is a huge difference. Review bombs are by people who usually have not played the game/app but post negative reviews on mass because of something usually unrelated to the game itself. In the case of Robinhood they are written by people upset that they have been monetarily screwed by the app. There were millions of people in WSB, 100,000 negitive reviews is only a fraction of that.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - zamadatix 6y ago
    I don't think there is any appreciable difference, at least with the Steam example, as to review it you have to have owned it and refunds are neither easy or plentiful. Besides they were usually bombed for things relating to game login changes or DRM changes not on a whim like free apps on Google Play often are (which Robinhood is). That's not to say Robinhood didn't deserve poor reviews or Steam hiding it is good but it definitely has seemed to strike more of a nerve with Robinhood even though both were very similar.
fastball 6y ago
You think Google, the 5th largest company in the world (by mkt cap), has no skin in the game when it comes maintaining the finance industry status quo?
- ben509 6y ago
  Reasons Google would not want the financial status quo: 1. It tends to retard technical progress. 2. They have to make deals with entrenched incumbents to do finance. 3. There's nothing stopping a hedge fund manipulating Alphabet's stock.
  - notahacker 6y ago
    Even if they do want to preserve the financial status quo, it's pretty difficult to see where the review score of a retail broker app fits in with that. On the other hand avoiding review bombing is a Google Play store business objective, doing it in a half assed reactive way with an algorithm is Google's style, and of course it's also Google's style to not care about customer service nearly enough to wade into a debate about whether a pile on related to genuine upset with an app company's policy is really review bombing
repsilat 6y ago
I don't think this is about the specific news or Robinhood's specific actions. More likely Google have a policy (or a habit) of removing reviews that don't look "organic", or reviews that seem driven by news or agenda. App developers will more be more likely to publish on your platform if their reviews are less likely to be unfairly mobbed or something. Just guessing, obviously, and I'm not sure how the contours of such a policy would work. Clearly organic bad reviews will often be correlated with each other, and with negative news.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ehsankia 6y ago
  > More likely Google have a policy (or a habit) Or automated system
animal_spirits 6y ago
Google doesn't want fake reviews on the play store. Its as simple as that. Google is removing these probably because they look like fake reviews, and don't care enough to spend time and resources investigating it.
- utkugenc 6y ago
  How do you define "fake review"? People are not happy with a company and its app and they are "punishing" the company, what is the purpose of reviews if not this?
  - ttt0 6y ago
    But it's a free market and Google can do whatever they want lol. Don't you dare to say a bad word about them.
  - animal_spirits 6y ago
    Exactly, how do you define "fake review"? Google sees 100K+ negative reviews coming in for one app on one day. What do you think they're going to do? Take 'em all down and call it a day. I really doubt that there is some incredibly corrupt culture in Google Play reviews or something like some are suggesting. I really the product owners just want to go home for the day/turn off the computer and eat dinner, just like everybody else that has a job.
    - thereisnospork 6y ago
      How is that not fraud though? They are advertising a manipulated review score. The 1 stars aren't bots, they are people. Would it be legal for e.g. yelp to remove a string of bad reviews stemming from a catering company giving a wedding food poisoning?
      - animal_spirits 6y ago
        I'm not saying I condone what happened. I just see people claiming corruption, and I personally doubt that. I think its more along the form of "lets remove these reviews for now and analyze them tomorrow"
pgrote 6y ago
Unsure. What I do know is that Google doesn't remove reviews for just anyone. They don't remove Play Store reviews and they do not remove Google Local reviews. Even if an app or a company is birdgaded due to bad news that is someone's opinion. Hopefully, Google can 1) Send out something explaining their action and 2) Provide regular folks the ability to have reviews removed.
paxys 6y ago
They don't like that apps on their store are being review bombed. That's really all it is.
fireattack 6y ago
My theory is something simpler: Play Store has anti-review-bombing mechanism. It simply kicks in in this case.
elihu 6y ago
Google makes a lot of money from app developers. Perhaps they decided that the cost to them of angering app users by deleting negative reviews is less bad than the cost of app developers leaving their platform because Google won't protect their reputation (whether the negative ratings were deserved or not). App developers can watch this and rest easy that Google has their back in this (even if they don't on other things).
- splaytreemap 6y ago
  Google Play Store is a monopoly. Developers literally can't leave unless they want their android installs to decline by 99%.
propogandist 6y ago
Does Robinhood run on Google Cloud? If they aren’t this could be a move to try to get them to consider switching. Keep in mind AWS is about to take on Twitter account and they took out Parler, an up and coming competitor overnight.

by cmdli 6y ago

alexanderh 6y ago

Money. These people are fixing to lose to much, they'll pay their way out any way they can while they still can.

harikb 6y ago
I get RH might be paying money to cleanup play store reviews, but how much is enough to justify the negative PR ? There is another angle though - may be RH or some higher power is threatening to sue Google if they didn't help cleanup based on their own terms, which might have clause of active sabotage - I am sure they claim this is one such event.
- bonoboTP 6y ago
  That's not how these things work. Google is interested in the status quo. So much turmoil around digital platforms angering the owner class is bad for their business, more tech regulation etc. They don't want any drama, just fun and consumption. RH didn't pay anything. Google knows what to do. The interests are way deeper than some pocket change moving around...

whoisjuan 6y ago

> They aren't that connected to Wall Street companies. Lol. Sure they aren't.

mhh__ 6y ago
Maybe, but Google are in a different league to these funds.
- TheCraiggers 6y ago
  Google the corporation? Sure. Many of the managers and workers at Google? Quite likely have a stake in what goes down on Wall Street.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    That's more plausible but still relatively unlikely if you consider both how Google usually operate and who'd have clearance to pull the trigger if this is what is being suggested. On balance, I really think this is just an automated system that's being conservative. Would you be in any way surprised that Google would have such a thing looking for big impulses in activity?
  - ummonk 6y ago
    I doubt it. I'm at Facebook not Google but most of us employees are supporting the WSB side of this.
    - sthnblllII 6y ago
      Most of the employees are not executives.
- erezsh 6y ago
  *Alphabet

optimalsolver 6y ago

They don't like their platform being manipulated by organized downvoting. Not rocket science.

fastball 6y ago
Manipulated? I just gave a 1-star review on the iOS app store and am currently pulling all my money out of my RH account, because I don't like how RH is behaving. People all thinking something is shit is not manipulation, its just collective agreement.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
  To play the Devil's advocate here, my personal intuition is that App reviews should be for how the apps perform, and shouldn't be used as proxy for reviewing those businesses. If the app is buggy or broken or whatever, it makes sense to give a low rating. I am not sure it makes equal sense if people suddenly realize they don't like the company who has made the app.
  - fastball 6y ago
    That's a fair point, and I agree with you – I hate it when reviews don't give me (the reader) an accurate picture of the experience I'll have with this app. Two problems though: 1. That's not how people treat reviews (people will leave a positive review if they love the business but the app is crap), so it's misleading to only enforce such an ideal here, with negative reviews. 2. In this case, the business effectively is the app, at least from the user's perspective. The app wouldn't let me even look at GME/AMC today, much less buy it. That's not what I want from a stock trading app, because it's an annoying experience that leaves a sour taste in my mouth, so 1-star it is.
  - olyjohn 6y ago
    What if an app functions perfectly, but doesn't do what it promises? That's what seems to be happening here.
  - read_if_gay_ 6y ago

glenvdb 6y ago

This reminds me of the "review bombing" debacles that have plagued Steam over recent years. Valve implemented a system to detect these patterns and discard the ratings. Valve had no particular stake in the games being "bombed", but they do have a stake in the trust people have in their platform. People want to know if a game is truly good or bad and not have to wonder if it was the victim of some kind of vendetta. At the time no one strongly protested the move by Valve, but in the context of this situation with Google, Robinhood, and WSB it seems to have hit a particular nerve.

TheCraiggers 6y ago
I don't think they remove the reviews outright though. They detect it, label it, and offer both a "recent reviews" and "all-time reviews", as well as a visual graph to show you the trend. A far better approach than just removing the reviews outright if you ask me.
teruakohatu 6y ago
There is a huge difference. Review bombs are by people who usually have not played the game/app but post negative reviews on mass because of something usually unrelated to the game itself. In the case of Robinhood they are written by people upset that they have been monetarily screwed by the app. There were millions of people in WSB, 100,000 negitive reviews is only a fraction of that.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- zamadatix 6y ago
  I don't think there is any appreciable difference, at least with the Steam example, as to review it you have to have owned it and refunds are neither easy or plentiful. Besides they were usually bombed for things relating to game login changes or DRM changes not on a whim like free apps on Google Play often are (which Robinhood is). That's not to say Robinhood didn't deserve poor reviews or Steam hiding it is good but it definitely has seemed to strike more of a nerve with Robinhood even though both were very similar.

fastball 6y ago

You think Google, the 5th largest company in the world (by mkt cap), has no skin in the game when it comes maintaining the finance industry status quo?

ben509 6y ago
Reasons Google would not want the financial status quo: 1. It tends to retard technical progress. 2. They have to make deals with entrenched incumbents to do finance. 3. There's nothing stopping a hedge fund manipulating Alphabet's stock.
- notahacker 6y ago
  Even if they do want to preserve the financial status quo, it's pretty difficult to see where the review score of a retail broker app fits in with that. On the other hand avoiding review bombing is a Google Play store business objective, doing it in a half assed reactive way with an algorithm is Google's style, and of course it's also Google's style to not care about customer service nearly enough to wade into a debate about whether a pile on related to genuine upset with an app company's policy is really review bombing

repsilat 6y ago

I don't think this is about the specific news or Robinhood's specific actions. More likely Google have a policy (or a habit) of removing reviews that don't look "organic", or reviews that seem driven by news or agenda. App developers will more be more likely to publish on your platform if their reviews are less likely to be unfairly mobbed or something. Just guessing, obviously, and I'm not sure how the contours of such a policy would work. Clearly organic bad reviews will often be correlated with each other, and with negative news.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ehsankia 6y ago
> More likely Google have a policy (or a habit) Or automated system

animal_spirits 6y ago

Google doesn't want fake reviews on the play store. Its as simple as that. Google is removing these probably because they look like fake reviews, and don't care enough to spend time and resources investigating it.

utkugenc 6y ago
How do you define "fake review"? People are not happy with a company and its app and they are "punishing" the company, what is the purpose of reviews if not this?
- ttt0 6y ago
  But it's a free market and Google can do whatever they want lol. Don't you dare to say a bad word about them.
- animal_spirits 6y ago
  Exactly, how do you define "fake review"? Google sees 100K+ negative reviews coming in for one app on one day. What do you think they're going to do? Take 'em all down and call it a day. I really doubt that there is some incredibly corrupt culture in Google Play reviews or something like some are suggesting. I really the product owners just want to go home for the day/turn off the computer and eat dinner, just like everybody else that has a job.
  - thereisnospork 6y ago
    How is that not fraud though? They are advertising a manipulated review score. The 1 stars aren't bots, they are people. Would it be legal for e.g. yelp to remove a string of bad reviews stemming from a catering company giving a wedding food poisoning?
    - animal_spirits 6y ago
      I'm not saying I condone what happened. I just see people claiming corruption, and I personally doubt that. I think its more along the form of "lets remove these reviews for now and analyze them tomorrow"

pgrote 6y ago

Unsure. What I do know is that Google doesn't remove reviews for just anyone. They don't remove Play Store reviews and they do not remove Google Local reviews. Even if an app or a company is birdgaded due to bad news that is someone's opinion. Hopefully, Google can 1) Send out something explaining their action and 2) Provide regular folks the ability to have reviews removed.

paxys 6y ago

They don't like that apps on their store are being review bombed. That's really all it is.

fireattack 6y ago

My theory is something simpler: Play Store has anti-review-bombing mechanism. It simply kicks in in this case.

elihu 6y ago

Google makes a lot of money from app developers. Perhaps they decided that the cost to them of angering app users by deleting negative reviews is less bad than the cost of app developers leaving their platform because Google won't protect their reputation (whether the negative ratings were deserved or not). App developers can watch this and rest easy that Google has their back in this (even if they don't on other things).

splaytreemap 6y ago
Google Play Store is a monopoly. Developers literally can't leave unless they want their android installs to decline by 99%.

propogandist 6y ago

Does Robinhood run on Google Cloud? If they aren’t this could be a move to try to get them to consider switching. Keep in mind AWS is about to take on Twitter account and they took out Parler, an up and coming competitor overnight.