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I agree that reviews are a poor measure of value/quality. Fake reviews can be purchased now.

But ranking apps by engagement is measuring the wrong thing: Some apps are wonderful, but are used very infrequently -> Low 'engagement'. A YC example would be AirBNB.

Oh no, not another engagement metric! Just think of how (a)social media works ... I guess we would have apps crying for our attention even more than usual.

How do you measure user engagement?

For starters, tracking how often an app gets used, abandoned, deleted

Add some metrics to the app itself, I'd wager. Then you'll get people complaining about how the app (or app store) is spying on your every action, and phoning home.

Which is an absolutely reasonable complaint. Pervasive monitoring of users is not an acceptable practice.

Spy on usage