15 ms·

Apple urged to root out rating scams as developer highlights enforcement failure

199 points by egocentric 6y ago

blunte 6y ago
This will always be a cat and mouse game, although you would think Apple could have done better here. Perhaps a more effective solution would be for Apple to aggressively legally pursue bad actors like the group that churns out these apps. Make them hurt financially as an example to the next people who might entertain similar ideas. If Apple doesn’t start handling this better, eventually there will only be bad/fake apps on the store. Real developers will widely choose not to play the losing game.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  > Perhaps a more effective solution would be for Apple to aggressively legally pursue bad actors like the group that churns out these apps. Make them hurt financially as an example to the next people who might entertain similar ideas. Maybe a year or so ago Amazon started to aggressively pursue legal action against a few people who were abusing their return process. People who were clearly and egregiously stealing millions of dollars from Amazon via fraudulent returns. I haven’t seen any follow-up reporting but I would love to know the numbers behind the cost/benefit. It doesn’t seem to have had any impact on customer experience and I have to imagine there were others similarly abusing the process who have since stopped. I suspect the approach has largely paid off.
- cwyers 6y ago
  I'm sure that app review is a hard problem. But it seems like Apple has the worst of both worlds sometimes -- HN frequently puts cases where an existing, very successful app gets suddenly dinged for something, or a new app from a big vendor gets nailed on a point of policy. Meanwhile absolute shovelware like this seems to be able to clear the review process no problem.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Those big cases where an existing app gets dinged are often justified, but are also extremely rare. Keeping out shovelware while also allowing rudimentary but useful apps by new developers is a much harder problem. They aren’t really connected in any particular way.
    - ncf04212 6y ago
      > Those big cases where an existing app gets dinged are often justified, but are also extremely rare. There have been many cases ( like Hey ) where Apple justification for removing apps was "We saw you're making money, therefore give us money, even tho we provide zero added value".
      - zepto 6y ago
        "We saw you're making money, therefore give us money, even tho we provide zero added value.” This is just something you made up. Apple’s justification was quite different.
darkwizard42 6y ago
It does really damage both consumer and developer trust to not staff this problem more. At the core of Apple's marketing is trust... trust us to build a better device, trust us with your information, trust us to stand up to the data-hoovering tech giants... If Apple can't stop gaming of reviews, malicious apps, developers getting hurt then they fail on this. I really don't want to see the App Store go the way of Amazon listings in terms of reviews, but it really is starting to get hard to defend.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  It seems short sighted to let that trust go for so little considering how much profit Apple earns because of the trust. Even throwing a billion dollars at labor to prevent fraud and maintain their lead in trust seems obviously worth it at their scale.
- frankfrankfrank 6y ago
  I don't think it does damage to Apple, or at least not to a level that would sway the cost-benefit calculation. As others have pointed out, these scam apps make Apple a lot of money, while they get essentially none of the negatives from it. I believe that most people will not at all attribute a negative app experience with Apple, and the likelihood that many will discover that other reviewers will describe that they fell for a scam, will make people also feel insecure for having fallen for a confidence trick (the fake ratings), aka con job.
jarym 6y ago
Sheesh. You’d think Apple getting 30% would at least use their ‘cut’ to weed out the bad apples (sorry could not resist there) that would lead to long term damage to their own ecosystem.
- nobodyshere 6y ago
  Isn't that 15% for first incoming $1M though?
  - GloriousKoji 6y ago
    That only came about recently because Epic games started a fight with apple. They've been charging 30% for well over a decade.
    - zepto 6y ago
      You are giving too much credit to Epic for this. Epic is just riding on the general sentiment that has been building in the developer community for a while now that 30% is too much.
xbar 6y ago
This is a fundamental problem. Apple could not overinvest in attempting to solve this problem. Clobbering legitimate reviews would be greatly more beneficial to society than the current situation of uncontrolled ripoff-ware.
dubcanada 6y ago
This has really nothing to do with Apple, and largely how our 5 star rating turned out. For example I sell stuff on Etsy, I have about 50~ 5 star reviews if I get one 1 star review my average is now 4.92 which is still 5 stars. So it's really not that big of a deal, if I had say a 4.8 with 40,000 ratings a series of a 100 in a row 1 star reviews will do nothing to my score of 4.8. If I for say had five 5 star reviews and got one 1 star review, my average is 4.3 which will show a 4.5 (or a 4 star depending on how they round) at the star rating. If you are new you have zero room to get a bad review, even if you fix it. There are version reviews, etc that can fix that but, largely you're done. I really have no idea of how to redo this, but I don't think people should be giving a 5 star review with a comment. There should be considerations, reviews after a certain time should expire, you should be able to mark reviews as fixed, etc. I believe the current system is completely broken and needs to be adjusted a bit more then hiring some additional staff to read reviews.
- bluesign 6y ago
  Easiest option is not to show rating till you get lets say 20 ratings. But mostly on the app side, reviews are favored to 5 stars. (As you can trigger review request) Main problem is fake reviews.
- Solocomplex 6y ago
  Maybe user reviews are cleared every update, but ranked in the app store weighted by review averages from previous versions.
- monadic3 6y ago
  Yelp set the standard for incompetent, useless rating systems. Somehow it's even worse when they can verify purchases, use time, etc.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > This has really nothing to do with Apple, and largely how our 5 star rating turned out. Apple's goal is to provide a great experience. Searching for a thing and having to wade through a bunch of crapware or install some scammy garbage is not a good experience, let alone a great one. So even though it's not necessarily Apple's "Fault", it is in their best interest to fix it. It's also good developer relations, something they need to focus on a bit more. This is one of the places where Apple can really be focused to demonstrate the value developers are getting for that developer commission.
smoldesu 6y ago
And they take 30% from my earnings every time my app is sold? What are they doing with that money, bathing in it?
Jkvngt 6y ago
Does anybody even buy “apps” any more? Google and Apple have such terrible stores, I think the last “app” I actually bought was like five years ago. Plus they all seem to stop working with regularity. The phone and tablet scene is trash and it’s mostly the fault of Google and Apple.
- egocentric 6y ago
  Apple’s App Store grossed more than $64 billion in 2020, according to an analysis by CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/08/apples-app-store-had-gross-sales-around-64-billion-in-2020.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/08/apples-app-store-had-gross-s...
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  Yes. > The phone and tablet scene is trash and it’s mostly the fault of Google and Apple. Not even sure what you are talking about. Lots of great software out there. It can be a pain to find amidst some of the junk, but it's not that hard.
  - eropple 6y ago
    For me it's not that it's hard to find stuff, it's that I don't...need...stuff. I use a phone as a communications device, as a shopping device, or as a panel to services I pay for through other pathways. I actually do not remember the last app I purchased, like...for money. IAPs are somewhat of a different story, but even those are pretty niche for me. Do people really need that much...stuff?
    - ogre_codes 6y ago
      I can't say I buy a ton of apps either. I do use a lot of apps though. Most for services or products I otherwise own or use. My sprinklers, my bank, brokerage, and credits cards, Zoom, iRobot, etc. I do also buy a few apps. Not a ton, but a few here and there. A few calculator apps, a few random games. Things like Pixelmator and Linea Sketch I use quite a bit. I think I've bought more apps on my iPad than on my Mac. My phone not quite so many, but I've bought a few. Mostly not many because I don't use my phone as much as my iPad or my Mac.
EEMac 6y ago
When "GPS Speedometer" gets $200K/month in subscriptions, Apple gets their cut of that whether the app is legitimate or not.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
This would be so easy to do, Apple could look at how many ratings someone gives, how long they have been customers, whether they have ever stepped foot in an actual Apple store, etc. It would be trivial to make a ratings trust schema using such information
- amelius 6y ago
  Can't they let an independent party do it? Saves them the hassle and the blame.
  - majewsky 6y ago
    Any reviewing organization with sufficient manpower would require significant funding, which has to come from Apple, in which case the reviewer is no longer an independent party.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  It wouldn't be "Easy". Everywhere you have reviews encouraging people to put money down on things, someone is gaming that system. Amazon has issues as does Google. It isn't easy, but it is absolutely necessary. Particularly it should be straight forward for developers to submit complaints about copycat software that is namesquatting or abusive.
ksec 6y ago
The whole argument for Apple to charge 30% was that they are doing "curation" and "Guards" against malware in their App Store. And not for "Access". As a developer you have a relationship with Apple, but not with your user. Since Apple is sitting in between both parties as middleman. Apple refund any purchase without first asking the Developers and this mechanism has been abused quote a lot in Gaming. And because of that Apple has a duty to sort these IP, copyright, scam out. Right now Apple is refusing to do anything and suggest it is not their problem. ( Until the press start running stories on it ) Apple, You can't have it both ways.
- zepto 6y ago
  Apple benefits developers by creating an environment in while consumers feel safe spending money. Refund abuse is something all stores deal with and write off. Scams on the other hand are a problem that Apple must deal with. Nowhere has Apple suggested that it isn’t their problem. If they don’t solve it, they will suffer. Apple isn’t having anything ‘both ways’.
  - minikites 6y ago
    >If they don’t solve it, they will suffer. Will they? They shipped defective keyboards for years and they seem to be doing just fine. The idea that "companies who do bad things will be punished in the marketplace thanks to the free market" is juvenile and relies on a false belief in a just world.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      The market would have punished Apple if a competitive alternative product existed.
      - minikites 6y ago
        So why doesn't one exist? The whole idea of free market capitalism seems to fall apart when one examines any of the necessary assumptions in any real detail.
jmull 6y ago
I expect Apple will take this very seriously. The problem strikes at the core of the value of the their app store. Good, real apps should have good ratings and preferred placement. Bad/fake/scammy apps should not. But this is a tough problem to get right. If your criteria for "bad" are too broad you will catch legitimate apps, harming legit developers and their users. Yet, if your criteria leave even a little room scammers can find and exploit it. The scammer's job is to find any and all loopholes to exploit. They will find a small crack and drive a tank through it. The legit app developer's job is to make good apps. They can inadvertently stumble over even simple restrictions, at times. Take this tricky dynamic and tackle it at scale, and it becomes an order of magnitude more difficult. I kinda wonder if they shouldn't charge, say $100 to list an app on the App Store and $50-$100 per update too. It's going to cut down on scam apps and pay for enforcement. Sadly it would cut down on legit apps too. But it might be worth it overall.
- tekstar 6y ago
  > $100 to list an app on the App Store and $50-$100 per update Which of the problems exposed in the original twitter thread would be solved by adding these payments?
  - warp 6y ago
    I assume the idea is that each update can then be manually reviewed (by an actual human) -- because that's what you're paying for as a developer listing your app. Which should in theory get rid of a lot of scam submissions.
    - tekstar 6y ago
      Apple store already has a human review every update.
      - notriddle 6y ago
        Overworked and underpaid human reviewers.
tartoran 6y ago
Apple should add a new policy which would amount to refunding all the money to buyers for obvious scams like the iwatch typing apps with fake reviews. They could keep say 30% so that their aren't incentivized to not do so. If earnings for fake apps get "confiscated" or reimbursed we'd see most fake apps disappear overnight.
heavyset_go 6y ago
Apple and Google have kept a stranglehold on the mobile app distribution market for over a decade now. Apple takes 15% to 30% of all revenue generated, and they still end up running their app store like this. What we need is real competition in the mobile app distribution market. Surely companies can compete on efficiency with that 15-30% cut, or less, and the benefits of that competition will be passed on to users and developers who aren't just Apple.
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  If Apple does not confront issues like this, eventually someone will come along and successfully pass regulation to force the competition in their walled garden. If they stepped up their human curation a bunch, made app quality "a thing" in the same way they've gone after privacy protection, it would make their 15-30% cut a lot easier for people to stomach. Right now it just looks like money printing press.
_qulr 6y ago
1. Online crowdsourced ratings can't be trusted anywhere. Not in the App Store, not on Amazon, etc. They're just too easy to game. The role of reviewing products was always best done by the professional news media. 2. The App Store was based entirely on the iTunes Music Store, and that's an extremely bad model for selling software. There are "bad" songs in the iTunes Music Store, but that's largely a matter of personal musical taste, and none of the songs are scams, because iTunes is not an open system where anyone can pay $99 for a "music developer" account and submit songs. The music for sale there was all written by legitimate professional musicians. Moreover, music customers generally don't need technical support, or refunds, except maybe in the case of a mistaken purchase. The ratings and reviews for songs are mainly about taste, not evaluating whether the song "works correctly". And songs are generally quite cheap, so you're not going to lose much money buying a "bad" song. This entire model is simply not appropriate for software. If an app doesn't work right, the customer needs technical support, and if it still doesn't work right, then the customer needs a refund. There should be exactly 0 apps in the App Store that are scams or don't work at all. Ratings and reviews are not a good way to "police" this. Every song in the iTunes Music Store "works", in the respect that it plays the expected music when you press play. The iTunes Music Store doesn't need to be curated much by Apple, because the music is already "curated" by the record labels. Same with the TV shows and movies for sale there, "curated" by the Hollywood studios. But there's no such thing for apps, and that's why the crap store is full of scams. The record labels and movie studios have large amounts of time and money invested in each of their products. This is not true of Apple's App Store, where each app gets maybe a 20 minute review, which is almost nothing in comparison.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  > The role of reviewing products was always best done by the professional news media Of course, the producer who profits from sales, and the news media who profits from ads should be trusted to come together and produce perfectly trustworthy product reviews... The perverse relationship between advertisers and media outlets make me incredibly skeptical of content creators who produce reviews. I can only think of a few off the top of my head that I trust.
  - 6y ago
tlogan 6y ago
The problem here is that Apple makes a lot of money via scam apps (which have outrageous weekly subscriptions like $19/week or similar) So I do not think Apple will do anything here...
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  Scam apps are a rounding error in Apple’s revenue. On the other hand, the problem getting media attention hurts their entire argument around App Store reviews & policies which hurts their arguments regarding potential anti-trust litigation.
  - pornel 6y ago
    It would be nice if large companies had such a sober holistic view, but I doubt it. There are people in charge of App Store specifically, and presumably increasing revenue is their KPI. Fighting scams is difficult and expensive, and they've probably calculated that spending more on the problem doesn't bring positive ROI in simple dollar terms. User trust and risk of litigation aren't on balance sheets.
dukeofdoom 6y ago
Didn't Apple themselves scam the rating system by throwing out 1 star votes for the trading app Robinhood, after it started selling its users GME stock without the users initiating the sale.
- amznthrwaway 6y ago
  That was Google.
pwinnski 6y ago
This is a hard problem that literally nobody is handling well, but Apple has a demonstrated history of solving hard problems, so they should prioritize this one. I don't actually know what the ideal solution is, but they have the resources and the data to address it in a way nobody else does. I'm not saying it's easy, or cheap, but it has to happen. Make it happen, Apple. This problem is a submarine, and it will torpedo you if you don't.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
The problem with ratings is that you are relying on altruism. People doing the real ratings are not getting any direct benefit from the work to rate. However, people doing fake ratings are getting direct monetary benefits. Which of these two groups do you think will create more ratings? For a consumer, I think the only thing that ultimately works is something like consumer reports which people pay money for and which do not accept any money or gifts or free samples from the makers of the stuff getting reviewed.
pvg 6y ago
Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25986515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25986515
hausenfefr2 6y ago
Precedents will be set here! BACK IN MY DAY (the 90s?) You could go to the shitty Mall and have some fun spitting off the balcony or you could go to the good Mall and have some fun trying on stuff at Hollister. The difference was that if you tried to spit off the balcony at the good mall; you were DIRTY! (havent heard anyone say dirtyKids in a little while). Spitting-off-the-balcony was like the PURPOSE of the Shitty Mall! Preppy kids spit on Dirty kids at the Shitty Mall! Or maybe... Even as a teenager; I had enough respect for a place-kept-clean that I would have felt like an ASS for fucking up the good mall. There is no more "Good Mall". Friendly, Legitimate, Genuine, Purposeful Interaction seems to be a rare gem today. or worse; a bait-and-switch. Many elderly folks feel that the only way to win is not to play. This is not healthy! This is melting our brains! There's no Chart, Graph, Gauge, or Dashboard. No way to measure the affect of this universally shared neurosis. If "Dark Patterns" were Poison; we'd all be dead now. Maybe it just takes longer.
bozzcl 6y ago
I've been thinking about this, and the conclusion I came to is that you'll never be fully able to block fake, scammy apps. You can definitely make them less effective, though. Here's some random ideas I came up with: * Charging $8 a week seems hard to justify in pretty much any situation. Why not enforce a max cap on app subscription fees? I assume these apps use Apple's payment system, so they can control that. * Fake reviews are only as effective as their exposure. Assuming spoofing location is hard, for example GPS-based location is used exclusively, if Apple limited ratings and review availability based on location (put review data in a quadtree, for example) scammers would have to go through more hoops to ensure their fake reviews are effective. ** Of course, if location is based only on IP or other spoofable data this becomes much easier to circumvent. * Keeping reviews visible only if the user regularly uses the app ensures there's an extra cost to generating fake reviews as they have to be maintained.

199 points by egocentric 6y ago

This will always be a cat and mouse game, although you would think Apple could have done better here. Perhaps a more effective solution would be for Apple to aggressively legally pursue bad actors like the group that churns out these apps. Make them hurt financially as an example to the next people who might entertain similar ideas. If Apple doesn’t start handling this better, eventually there will only be bad/fake apps on the store. Real developers will widely choose not to play the losing game.

elliekelly 6y ago
> Perhaps a more effective solution would be for Apple to aggressively legally pursue bad actors like the group that churns out these apps. Make them hurt financially as an example to the next people who might entertain similar ideas. Maybe a year or so ago Amazon started to aggressively pursue legal action against a few people who were abusing their return process. People who were clearly and egregiously stealing millions of dollars from Amazon via fraudulent returns. I haven’t seen any follow-up reporting but I would love to know the numbers behind the cost/benefit. It doesn’t seem to have had any impact on customer experience and I have to imagine there were others similarly abusing the process who have since stopped. I suspect the approach has largely paid off.
cwyers 6y ago
I'm sure that app review is a hard problem. But it seems like Apple has the worst of both worlds sometimes -- HN frequently puts cases where an existing, very successful app gets suddenly dinged for something, or a new app from a big vendor gets nailed on a point of policy. Meanwhile absolute shovelware like this seems to be able to clear the review process no problem.
- zepto 6y ago
  Those big cases where an existing app gets dinged are often justified, but are also extremely rare. Keeping out shovelware while also allowing rudimentary but useful apps by new developers is a much harder problem. They aren’t really connected in any particular way.
  - ncf04212 6y ago
    > Those big cases where an existing app gets dinged are often justified, but are also extremely rare. There have been many cases ( like Hey ) where Apple justification for removing apps was "We saw you're making money, therefore give us money, even tho we provide zero added value".
    - zepto 6y ago
      "We saw you're making money, therefore give us money, even tho we provide zero added value.” This is just something you made up. Apple’s justification was quite different.

darkwizard42 6y ago

It does really damage both consumer and developer trust to not staff this problem more. At the core of Apple's marketing is trust... trust us to build a better device, trust us with your information, trust us to stand up to the data-hoovering tech giants... If Apple can't stop gaming of reviews, malicious apps, developers getting hurt then they fail on this. I really don't want to see the App Store go the way of Amazon listings in terms of reviews, but it really is starting to get hard to defend.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
It seems short sighted to let that trust go for so little considering how much profit Apple earns because of the trust. Even throwing a billion dollars at labor to prevent fraud and maintain their lead in trust seems obviously worth it at their scale.
frankfrankfrank 6y ago
I don't think it does damage to Apple, or at least not to a level that would sway the cost-benefit calculation. As others have pointed out, these scam apps make Apple a lot of money, while they get essentially none of the negatives from it. I believe that most people will not at all attribute a negative app experience with Apple, and the likelihood that many will discover that other reviewers will describe that they fell for a scam, will make people also feel insecure for having fallen for a confidence trick (the fake ratings), aka con job.

jarym 6y ago

Sheesh. You’d think Apple getting 30% would at least use their ‘cut’ to weed out the bad apples (sorry could not resist there) that would lead to long term damage to their own ecosystem.

nobodyshere 6y ago
Isn't that 15% for first incoming $1M though?
- GloriousKoji 6y ago
  That only came about recently because Epic games started a fight with apple. They've been charging 30% for well over a decade.
  - zepto 6y ago
    You are giving too much credit to Epic for this. Epic is just riding on the general sentiment that has been building in the developer community for a while now that 30% is too much.

xbar 6y ago

This is a fundamental problem. Apple could not overinvest in attempting to solve this problem. Clobbering legitimate reviews would be greatly more beneficial to society than the current situation of uncontrolled ripoff-ware.

dubcanada 6y ago

This has really nothing to do with Apple, and largely how our 5 star rating turned out. For example I sell stuff on Etsy, I have about 50~ 5 star reviews if I get one 1 star review my average is now 4.92 which is still 5 stars. So it's really not that big of a deal, if I had say a 4.8 with 40,000 ratings a series of a 100 in a row 1 star reviews will do nothing to my score of 4.8. If I for say had five 5 star reviews and got one 1 star review, my average is 4.3 which will show a 4.5 (or a 4 star depending on how they round) at the star rating. If you are new you have zero room to get a bad review, even if you fix it. There are version reviews, etc that can fix that but, largely you're done. I really have no idea of how to redo this, but I don't think people should be giving a 5 star review with a comment. There should be considerations, reviews after a certain time should expire, you should be able to mark reviews as fixed, etc. I believe the current system is completely broken and needs to be adjusted a bit more then hiring some additional staff to read reviews.

bluesign 6y ago
Easiest option is not to show rating till you get lets say 20 ratings. But mostly on the app side, reviews are favored to 5 stars. (As you can trigger review request) Main problem is fake reviews.
Solocomplex 6y ago
Maybe user reviews are cleared every update, but ranked in the app store weighted by review averages from previous versions.
monadic3 6y ago
Yelp set the standard for incompetent, useless rating systems. Somehow it's even worse when they can verify purchases, use time, etc.
ogre_codes 6y ago
> This has really nothing to do with Apple, and largely how our 5 star rating turned out. Apple's goal is to provide a great experience. Searching for a thing and having to wade through a bunch of crapware or install some scammy garbage is not a good experience, let alone a great one. So even though it's not necessarily Apple's "Fault", it is in their best interest to fix it. It's also good developer relations, something they need to focus on a bit more. This is one of the places where Apple can really be focused to demonstrate the value developers are getting for that developer commission.

smoldesu 6y ago

And they take 30% from my earnings every time my app is sold? What are they doing with that money, bathing in it?

Jkvngt 6y ago

Does anybody even buy “apps” any more? Google and Apple have such terrible stores, I think the last “app” I actually bought was like five years ago. Plus they all seem to stop working with regularity. The phone and tablet scene is trash and it’s mostly the fault of Google and Apple.

egocentric 6y ago
Apple’s App Store grossed more than $64 billion in 2020, according to an analysis by CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/08/apples-app-store-had-gross-sales-around-64-billion-in-2020.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/08/apples-app-store-had-gross-s...
ogre_codes 6y ago
Yes. > The phone and tablet scene is trash and it’s mostly the fault of Google and Apple. Not even sure what you are talking about. Lots of great software out there. It can be a pain to find amidst some of the junk, but it's not that hard.
- eropple 6y ago
  For me it's not that it's hard to find stuff, it's that I don't...need...stuff. I use a phone as a communications device, as a shopping device, or as a panel to services I pay for through other pathways. I actually do not remember the last app I purchased, like...for money. IAPs are somewhat of a different story, but even those are pretty niche for me. Do people really need that much...stuff?
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    I can't say I buy a ton of apps either. I do use a lot of apps though. Most for services or products I otherwise own or use. My sprinklers, my bank, brokerage, and credits cards, Zoom, iRobot, etc. I do also buy a few apps. Not a ton, but a few here and there. A few calculator apps, a few random games. Things like Pixelmator and Linea Sketch I use quite a bit. I think I've bought more apps on my iPad than on my Mac. My phone not quite so many, but I've bought a few. Mostly not many because I don't use my phone as much as my iPad or my Mac.

EEMac 6y ago

When "GPS Speedometer" gets $200K/month in subscriptions, Apple gets their cut of that whether the app is legitimate or not.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

This would be so easy to do, Apple could look at how many ratings someone gives, how long they have been customers, whether they have ever stepped foot in an actual Apple store, etc. It would be trivial to make a ratings trust schema using such information

amelius 6y ago
Can't they let an independent party do it? Saves them the hassle and the blame.
- majewsky 6y ago
  Any reviewing organization with sufficient manpower would require significant funding, which has to come from Apple, in which case the reviewer is no longer an independent party.
ogre_codes 6y ago
It wouldn't be "Easy". Everywhere you have reviews encouraging people to put money down on things, someone is gaming that system. Amazon has issues as does Google. It isn't easy, but it is absolutely necessary. Particularly it should be straight forward for developers to submit complaints about copycat software that is namesquatting or abusive.

ksec 6y ago

The whole argument for Apple to charge 30% was that they are doing "curation" and "Guards" against malware in their App Store. And not for "Access". As a developer you have a relationship with Apple, but not with your user. Since Apple is sitting in between both parties as middleman. Apple refund any purchase without first asking the Developers and this mechanism has been abused quote a lot in Gaming. And because of that Apple has a duty to sort these IP, copyright, scam out. Right now Apple is refusing to do anything and suggest it is not their problem. ( Until the press start running stories on it ) Apple, You can't have it both ways.

zepto 6y ago
Apple benefits developers by creating an environment in while consumers feel safe spending money. Refund abuse is something all stores deal with and write off. Scams on the other hand are a problem that Apple must deal with. Nowhere has Apple suggested that it isn’t their problem. If they don’t solve it, they will suffer. Apple isn’t having anything ‘both ways’.
- minikites 6y ago
  >If they don’t solve it, they will suffer. Will they? They shipped defective keyboards for years and they seem to be doing just fine. The idea that "companies who do bad things will be punished in the marketplace thanks to the free market" is juvenile and relies on a false belief in a just world.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    The market would have punished Apple if a competitive alternative product existed.
    - minikites 6y ago
      So why doesn't one exist? The whole idea of free market capitalism seems to fall apart when one examines any of the necessary assumptions in any real detail.

jmull 6y ago

I expect Apple will take this very seriously. The problem strikes at the core of the value of the their app store. Good, real apps should have good ratings and preferred placement. Bad/fake/scammy apps should not. But this is a tough problem to get right. If your criteria for "bad" are too broad you will catch legitimate apps, harming legit developers and their users. Yet, if your criteria leave even a little room scammers can find and exploit it. The scammer's job is to find any and all loopholes to exploit. They will find a small crack and drive a tank through it. The legit app developer's job is to make good apps. They can inadvertently stumble over even simple restrictions, at times. Take this tricky dynamic and tackle it at scale, and it becomes an order of magnitude more difficult. I kinda wonder if they shouldn't charge, say $100 to list an app on the App Store and $50-$100 per update too. It's going to cut down on scam apps and pay for enforcement. Sadly it would cut down on legit apps too. But it might be worth it overall.

tekstar 6y ago
> $100 to list an app on the App Store and $50-$100 per update Which of the problems exposed in the original twitter thread would be solved by adding these payments?
- warp 6y ago
  I assume the idea is that each update can then be manually reviewed (by an actual human) -- because that's what you're paying for as a developer listing your app. Which should in theory get rid of a lot of scam submissions.
  - tekstar 6y ago
    Apple store already has a human review every update.
    - notriddle 6y ago
      Overworked and underpaid human reviewers.

tartoran 6y ago

Apple should add a new policy which would amount to refunding all the money to buyers for obvious scams like the iwatch typing apps with fake reviews. They could keep say 30% so that their aren't incentivized to not do so. If earnings for fake apps get "confiscated" or reimbursed we'd see most fake apps disappear overnight.

heavyset_go 6y ago

Apple and Google have kept a stranglehold on the mobile app distribution market for over a decade now. Apple takes 15% to 30% of all revenue generated, and they still end up running their app store like this. What we need is real competition in the mobile app distribution market. Surely companies can compete on efficiency with that 15-30% cut, or less, and the benefits of that competition will be passed on to users and developers who aren't just Apple.

rootusrootus 6y ago
If Apple does not confront issues like this, eventually someone will come along and successfully pass regulation to force the competition in their walled garden. If they stepped up their human curation a bunch, made app quality "a thing" in the same way they've gone after privacy protection, it would make their 15-30% cut a lot easier for people to stomach. Right now it just looks like money printing press.

_qulr 6y ago

1. Online crowdsourced ratings can't be trusted anywhere. Not in the App Store, not on Amazon, etc. They're just too easy to game. The role of reviewing products was always best done by the professional news media. 2. The App Store was based entirely on the iTunes Music Store, and that's an extremely bad model for selling software. There are "bad" songs in the iTunes Music Store, but that's largely a matter of personal musical taste, and none of the songs are scams, because iTunes is not an open system where anyone can pay $99 for a "music developer" account and submit songs. The music for sale there was all written by legitimate professional musicians. Moreover, music customers generally don't need technical support, or refunds, except maybe in the case of a mistaken purchase. The ratings and reviews for songs are mainly about taste, not evaluating whether the song "works correctly". And songs are generally quite cheap, so you're not going to lose much money buying a "bad" song. This entire model is simply not appropriate for software. If an app doesn't work right, the customer needs technical support, and if it still doesn't work right, then the customer needs a refund. There should be exactly 0 apps in the App Store that are scams or don't work at all. Ratings and reviews are not a good way to "police" this. Every song in the iTunes Music Store "works", in the respect that it plays the expected music when you press play. The iTunes Music Store doesn't need to be curated much by Apple, because the music is already "curated" by the record labels. Same with the TV shows and movies for sale there, "curated" by the Hollywood studios. But there's no such thing for apps, and that's why the crap store is full of scams. The record labels and movie studios have large amounts of time and money invested in each of their products. This is not true of Apple's App Store, where each app gets maybe a 20 minute review, which is almost nothing in comparison.

AmericanChopper 6y ago
> The role of reviewing products was always best done by the professional news media Of course, the producer who profits from sales, and the news media who profits from ads should be trusted to come together and produce perfectly trustworthy product reviews... The perverse relationship between advertisers and media outlets make me incredibly skeptical of content creators who produce reviews. I can only think of a few off the top of my head that I trust.
- 6y ago

tlogan 6y ago

The problem here is that Apple makes a lot of money via scam apps (which have outrageous weekly subscriptions like $19/week or similar) So I do not think Apple will do anything here...

Nextgrid 6y ago
Scam apps are a rounding error in Apple’s revenue. On the other hand, the problem getting media attention hurts their entire argument around App Store reviews & policies which hurts their arguments regarding potential anti-trust litigation.
- pornel 6y ago
  It would be nice if large companies had such a sober holistic view, but I doubt it. There are people in charge of App Store specifically, and presumably increasing revenue is their KPI. Fighting scams is difficult and expensive, and they've probably calculated that spending more on the problem doesn't bring positive ROI in simple dollar terms. User trust and risk of litigation aren't on balance sheets.

dukeofdoom 6y ago

Didn't Apple themselves scam the rating system by throwing out 1 star votes for the trading app Robinhood, after it started selling its users GME stock without the users initiating the sale.

amznthrwaway 6y ago
That was Google.

pwinnski 6y ago

This is a hard problem that literally nobody is handling well, but Apple has a demonstrated history of solving hard problems, so they should prioritize this one. I don't actually know what the ideal solution is, but they have the resources and the data to address it in a way nobody else does. I'm not saying it's easy, or cheap, but it has to happen. Make it happen, Apple. This problem is a submarine, and it will torpedo you if you don't.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

The problem with ratings is that you are relying on altruism. People doing the real ratings are not getting any direct benefit from the work to rate. However, people doing fake ratings are getting direct monetary benefits. Which of these two groups do you think will create more ratings? For a consumer, I think the only thing that ultimately works is something like consumer reports which people pay money for and which do not accept any money or gifts or free samples from the makers of the stuff getting reviewed.

pvg 6y ago

Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25986515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25986515

hausenfefr2 6y ago

Precedents will be set here! BACK IN MY DAY (the 90s?) You could go to the shitty Mall and have some fun spitting off the balcony or you could go to the good Mall and have some fun trying on stuff at Hollister. The difference was that if you tried to spit off the balcony at the good mall; you were DIRTY! (havent heard anyone say dirtyKids in a little while). Spitting-off-the-balcony was like the PURPOSE of the Shitty Mall! Preppy kids spit on Dirty kids at the Shitty Mall! Or maybe... Even as a teenager; I had enough respect for a place-kept-clean that I would have felt like an ASS for fucking up the good mall. There is no more "Good Mall". Friendly, Legitimate, Genuine, Purposeful Interaction seems to be a rare gem today. or worse; a bait-and-switch. Many elderly folks feel that the only way to win is not to play. This is not healthy! This is melting our brains! There's no Chart, Graph, Gauge, or Dashboard. No way to measure the affect of this universally shared neurosis. If "Dark Patterns" were Poison; we'd all be dead now. Maybe it just takes longer.

bozzcl 6y ago

I've been thinking about this, and the conclusion I came to is that you'll never be fully able to block fake, scammy apps. You can definitely make them less effective, though. Here's some random ideas I came up with: * Charging $8 a week seems hard to justify in pretty much any situation. Why not enforce a max cap on app subscription fees? I assume these apps use Apple's payment system, so they can control that. * Fake reviews are only as effective as their exposure. Assuming spoofing location is hard, for example GPS-based location is used exclusively, if Apple limited ratings and review availability based on location (put review data in a quadtree, for example) scammers would have to go through more hoops to ensure their fake reviews are effective. ** Of course, if location is based only on IP or other spoofable data this becomes much easier to circumvent. * Keeping reviews visible only if the user regularly uses the app ensures there's an extra cost to generating fake reviews as they have to be maintained.