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I always thought of app reviews as being reviews of the applications... not of the companies or services behind them. So it's kind of jarring for me to see the

I always thought of app reviews as being reviews of the applications... not of the companies or services behind them. So it's kind of jarring for me to see the app taking a hit when it's the service people have a complaint about. The app didn't misbehave, right? It's not like a different app interfacing with Robinhood would've worked any better. So while I don't particularly like what they're doing, I think I can understand it if this is their motivation for removing these reviews. Edit: Never mind—it turns out Google literally says "Your reviews should reflect the experience you've had with the content or service you're reviewing."... apparently they do want you to review the service... or at least at some point they thought they did. Pretty confusing to see how they're dealing with this now, if they truly want that. https://play.google.com/about/comment-posting-policy/ https://play.google.com/about/comment-posting-policy/

epistasis 6y ago
For this app, it is inseparable from the services it provides, they are one and the same. Edit: imagine reviewing the Instagram app, but doing it only as a review of the app part and not of the service too? If Instagram is likely to lose your data, or otherwise misbehave, and its not the app code but the service itself, it still has a big impact on the app experience. I can't think of a single app review that's only based on the app code, everything is also about what the app lets you do, the services attached to it.
- dataflow 6y ago
  How though? The website behaved the same way. By that logic it would be impossible to review the website? And it's not like it's hard to imagine an app with a worse interface in front of the same service. A worse app for the service should receive a lower rating, right?
  - epistasis 6y ago
    You can't use the app for anything except this one service. If you're not reviewing the service itself at the same time, what's the point of reviewing the app?
    - dataflow 6y ago
      You're reviewing how good of a UX the app has for the underlying service, as I see it. Because it's very easy to imagine a great stock broker with an awful UX. By your logic all variations of Facebook Messenger (like Lite, etc.) should receive the same rating? Surely that doesn't make sense?
      - matz1 6y ago
        Doesn't make sense to review only UX part of the app or any other part of the app. For me the review should include the whole experience the app gives. Yes I would expect Facebook Messenger app review to include the facebook messenger service experience.
        dataflow 6y ago
        Would you say the same thing if it was a 3rd party developer writing the app? Someone like yourself who's just trying to put a better app in front of Robinhood? Would they deserve blame for this too?
        matz1 6y ago
        Yes of course. >Someone like yourself who's just trying to put a better app in front of Robinhood? Yes I would expect some user to complaint, the service is part of the app experience.
        dataflow 6y ago
        That seems so unreasonable to me. What could that person's app have possibly done better to receive a better rating?! Do you blame people who are doing the best any human can do in their position when they have absolutely no control over anything?
        matz1 6y ago
        For me its not unreasonable. >What could that person's app have possibly done better to receive a better rating?! You can try find workaround, change to alternative service, build your own service (I'm not implying that its easy), or just simply accept that. Yes there will always be something you can't control but doesn't mean its an excuse to get away.
CivBase 6y ago
In this case, RH's actions negatively impacted the service which their users depend on. The app is an interface for that service. It's common for app reviews to be influenced by the quality of the backend service. If Spotify purged many popular musicians from their library, I'd expect app reviews to reflect that even if the app itself is still fine on a technical level.
harry8 6y ago
The app exists to provide you a service. You only have the app installed at all to use the service. When the service sucks 1 star is entirely reasonable. It's not a review of the developers effort. It's a review of using Robinhood with the app. If people hate it, that's their right, surely? Good on Google for making it utterly clear how dishonest they are. They're facing new monopoly regulation, how does this buy them political favor?
andrewstuart2 6y ago
You're correct. But it's also useless without the service provider, and the store specifically asked me if the app was good at trading stocks, linking bank accounts, tracking stocks. If we stick with your perspective, no, it's not. It's a pointless app without the service it consumes. And today the service frustrated a bunch of its core users. A good rating on the play store serves as advertising. It helps the app creator, and in this case the service provider, gain customers and make money. They probably should be penalized heavily for the way their users experienced service degradations today that made the application useless.
- dataflow 6y ago
  > But it's also useless without the service provider, and the store specifically asked me if the app was good at trading stocks, linking bank accounts, tracking stocks. This confirms what I said though. You tell the store "this app isn't good at trading stocks" because "GME was made unavailable for trading"? For that logic to follow, it would mean the app misled you or confused you when GME wasn't available for trading. But that's obviously not what happened here. Blaming it on the app for this seems very much like blaming your bus driver because the transit company changed the schedule.
  - always_left 6y ago
    We aren't saying "this app isn't good at trading stocks" We're saying this company is not good at trading stocks. The review section should be an honest forum for the app and the service the company can provide through the app. Do you really expect the common person to point out if the app made followed the fundamentals of UI/UX design? The review is to express users' experience, which can involve poor app design and/or poor service.
    - dataflow 6y ago
      > Do you really expect the common person to point out if the app made followed the fundamentals of UI/UX design? What? No. I expect them to say "it looked like my GME orders were submitted, but I don't see them going through", or things like that, if such problems existed. You don't need to be a UX expert to review a poor UX. But when the store asks you "is this app good at trading stocks" and you say "no it's awful, and I'm also not saying this app isn't good at trading stocks", you're not answering the question they're asking.
happytoexplain 6y ago
A user can't be expected to know where the line is between "working as intended" and "misbehaving". A user can't be expected to know what is the fault of the app's implementation, and what is the fault of "the service" behind the app. Even at their most restrained, users review the user experience.
- dataflow 6y ago
  > A user can't be expected to know where the line is between "working as intended" and "misbehaving". Sure they can. RH even blasted out messages through the app telling people exactly what is going on, and what they can and cannot do. Nothing I'm aware of confusing about it, certainly nothing that caused people to give this rating. I don't think people are dumb enough to not understand the difference between "this app is broken" and "I was forbidden from trading GME" with all the indications that were shown on the UI.
  - hetspookjee 6y ago
    Speaking for myself I perceive the app rating as a conglomeration of possible perceptions. On what that rating might reflect. You state it should reflect the apps functionality, but I feel that an App that doesn't do what I want, intuitively, is not a good app. Some rate it high because the font is so lovely. I think in the end a one dimensional numbers falls short to describe the plethora of thoughts that go into creating a rating, that can be given on a whim.
KingOfCoders 6y ago
It would be easy to seperate the reviews for providers and apps. Google doesn't do that. Same for Amazon. Very often bad reviews are for the seller or the packaging or the time for delivery. Then there are discussions from people who tell other people to review the product not the seller and on it goes. Amazon could have split - with ML I think they still could - the reviews and the seller in a way that satisfies users (seller reviews are much harder to find and not accessible at the point of product review).
- dataflow 6y ago
  Yeah, this is basically the same situation. I confess this has always been perplexing for me too. I don't understand how people can give poor ratings to a seller when they don't like a product. It's clear as day to me what each review is intended for, but apparently not to everyone?
cdash 6y ago
Here I thought the entire point of the App was to trade stocks and yet you couldn't do exactly that. A bad rating is warranted.
mech422 6y ago
Users review products/services based on "Did it fill my needs". They really don't care if it was useless because the app sucked, or the company sucked. They just leave a review saying "this sucked". If you're lucky, they leave enough info. about why it sucked, to see if it matters to you. The playstore isn't consumer reports :-)
barnaclejive 6y ago
"I always thought of app reviews as being reviews of the applications... not of the companies or services behind them." I stopped reading there since you are obviously misinformed.

epistasis 6y ago

For this app, it is inseparable from the services it provides, they are one and the same. Edit: imagine reviewing the Instagram app, but doing it only as a review of the app part and not of the service too? If Instagram is likely to lose your data, or otherwise misbehave, and its not the app code but the service itself, it still has a big impact on the app experience. I can't think of a single app review that's only based on the app code, everything is also about what the app lets you do, the services attached to it.

dataflow 6y ago
How though? The website behaved the same way. By that logic it would be impossible to review the website? And it's not like it's hard to imagine an app with a worse interface in front of the same service. A worse app for the service should receive a lower rating, right?
- epistasis 6y ago
  You can't use the app for anything except this one service. If you're not reviewing the service itself at the same time, what's the point of reviewing the app?
  - dataflow 6y ago
    You're reviewing how good of a UX the app has for the underlying service, as I see it. Because it's very easy to imagine a great stock broker with an awful UX. By your logic all variations of Facebook Messenger (like Lite, etc.) should receive the same rating? Surely that doesn't make sense?
    - matz1 6y ago
      Doesn't make sense to review only UX part of the app or any other part of the app. For me the review should include the whole experience the app gives. Yes I would expect Facebook Messenger app review to include the facebook messenger service experience.
      - dataflow 6y ago
        Would you say the same thing if it was a 3rd party developer writing the app? Someone like yourself who's just trying to put a better app in front of Robinhood? Would they deserve blame for this too?
        matz1 6y ago
        Yes of course. >Someone like yourself who's just trying to put a better app in front of Robinhood? Yes I would expect some user to complaint, the service is part of the app experience.
        dataflow 6y ago
        That seems so unreasonable to me. What could that person's app have possibly done better to receive a better rating?! Do you blame people who are doing the best any human can do in their position when they have absolutely no control over anything?
        matz1 6y ago
        For me its not unreasonable. >What could that person's app have possibly done better to receive a better rating?! You can try find workaround, change to alternative service, build your own service (I'm not implying that its easy), or just simply accept that. Yes there will always be something you can't control but doesn't mean its an excuse to get away.

CivBase 6y ago

In this case, RH's actions negatively impacted the service which their users depend on. The app is an interface for that service. It's common for app reviews to be influenced by the quality of the backend service. If Spotify purged many popular musicians from their library, I'd expect app reviews to reflect that even if the app itself is still fine on a technical level.

harry8 6y ago

The app exists to provide you a service. You only have the app installed at all to use the service. When the service sucks 1 star is entirely reasonable. It's not a review of the developers effort. It's a review of using Robinhood with the app. If people hate it, that's their right, surely? Good on Google for making it utterly clear how dishonest they are. They're facing new monopoly regulation, how does this buy them political favor?

andrewstuart2 6y ago

You're correct. But it's also useless without the service provider, and the store specifically asked me if the app was good at trading stocks, linking bank accounts, tracking stocks. If we stick with your perspective, no, it's not. It's a pointless app without the service it consumes. And today the service frustrated a bunch of its core users. A good rating on the play store serves as advertising. It helps the app creator, and in this case the service provider, gain customers and make money. They probably should be penalized heavily for the way their users experienced service degradations today that made the application useless.

dataflow 6y ago
> But it's also useless without the service provider, and the store specifically asked me if the app was good at trading stocks, linking bank accounts, tracking stocks. This confirms what I said though. You tell the store "this app isn't good at trading stocks" because "GME was made unavailable for trading"? For that logic to follow, it would mean the app misled you or confused you when GME wasn't available for trading. But that's obviously not what happened here. Blaming it on the app for this seems very much like blaming your bus driver because the transit company changed the schedule.
- always_left 6y ago
  We aren't saying "this app isn't good at trading stocks" We're saying this company is not good at trading stocks. The review section should be an honest forum for the app and the service the company can provide through the app. Do you really expect the common person to point out if the app made followed the fundamentals of UI/UX design? The review is to express users' experience, which can involve poor app design and/or poor service.
  - dataflow 6y ago
    > Do you really expect the common person to point out if the app made followed the fundamentals of UI/UX design? What? No. I expect them to say "it looked like my GME orders were submitted, but I don't see them going through", or things like that, if such problems existed. You don't need to be a UX expert to review a poor UX. But when the store asks you "is this app good at trading stocks" and you say "no it's awful, and I'm also not saying this app isn't good at trading stocks", you're not answering the question they're asking.

happytoexplain 6y ago

A user can't be expected to know where the line is between "working as intended" and "misbehaving". A user can't be expected to know what is the fault of the app's implementation, and what is the fault of "the service" behind the app. Even at their most restrained, users review the user experience.

dataflow 6y ago
> A user can't be expected to know where the line is between "working as intended" and "misbehaving". Sure they can. RH even blasted out messages through the app telling people exactly what is going on, and what they can and cannot do. Nothing I'm aware of confusing about it, certainly nothing that caused people to give this rating. I don't think people are dumb enough to not understand the difference between "this app is broken" and "I was forbidden from trading GME" with all the indications that were shown on the UI.
- hetspookjee 6y ago
  Speaking for myself I perceive the app rating as a conglomeration of possible perceptions. On what that rating might reflect. You state it should reflect the apps functionality, but I feel that an App that doesn't do what I want, intuitively, is not a good app. Some rate it high because the font is so lovely. I think in the end a one dimensional numbers falls short to describe the plethora of thoughts that go into creating a rating, that can be given on a whim.

KingOfCoders 6y ago

It would be easy to seperate the reviews for providers and apps. Google doesn't do that. Same for Amazon. Very often bad reviews are for the seller or the packaging or the time for delivery. Then there are discussions from people who tell other people to review the product not the seller and on it goes. Amazon could have split - with ML I think they still could - the reviews and the seller in a way that satisfies users (seller reviews are much harder to find and not accessible at the point of product review).

dataflow 6y ago
Yeah, this is basically the same situation. I confess this has always been perplexing for me too. I don't understand how people can give poor ratings to a seller when they don't like a product. It's clear as day to me what each review is intended for, but apparently not to everyone?

cdash 6y ago

Here I thought the entire point of the App was to trade stocks and yet you couldn't do exactly that. A bad rating is warranted.

mech422 6y ago

Users review products/services based on "Did it fill my needs". They really don't care if it was useless because the app sucked, or the company sucked. They just leave a review saying "this sucked". If you're lucky, they leave enough info. about why it sucked, to see if it matters to you. The playstore isn't consumer reports :-)

barnaclejive 6y ago

"I always thought of app reviews as being reviews of the applications... not of the companies or services behind them." I stopped reading there since you are obviously misinformed.