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Comment by tinyhouse | Hacker News Reader

My guess is that Google will get involved. It's not the first time a mob is trying to destroy the rating of an app. But their rating before all of this drama is not going to last; that's for sure.

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But the app is broken. They are not allowing you to buy shares. Why should an app that decides you can't buy certain shares, and they auto-sells some shares you own, be rated highly?

Because many people on social media encourage other people to give the app 1-point rating. That's something Google need to protect against. The poor rating should happen organically. But regardless, they are fucked.

It doesn't get more organic than word of mouth.

Thousands (millions?) Of people lost money / opportunity because of the app. Then those people rate what they think of the app - that ir cannot be trusted to act in their interest.

Why should Google protect them against consequences of their own decisions?

Do you expect that making money on the bubble should be quick and painless?

I expect that a broker won't arbitrarily make certain stocks "sell only" and cancel buy orders that have already been submitted.

Do you expect a trip down the highway will be free of highway robbery? It's called "highway robbery" for a reason... If you don't like it, stay off the highway!

Excellent point. This vote-mob isn't due to some extraneous BS like some other ones, it's a response to an unexpected and customer-hostile service restriction.

I don't see how anyone could trust Robinhood with their money in the future.

So because -company- does illegal thing and people respond by using whatever means they have Google should silence the masses of disaffected users just because some people changed their rating? That is some grade a:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair

A rating is not a thing that an app deserves. It's a datapoint published by an app store to help its users make decisions about which apps to use.

The one thing does not exclude the other.

it similar to how hacker news penalizes submission that rally for upvotes (specifically I remember a discussion about how posting links of your submission to twitter can penalize it)

Google doesn't care whether Robinhood succeeds or not. It cares whether people trust the Play Store ratings (and more broadly, trust the Play Store itself). They'll do what's needed to achieve their goals, not Robinhood.

As a user, I'd like to make sure that a trading app won't deny me the opportunity to actually make decent money.

While vote flooding via some confined social circle is a form of trolling I don’t think this case fits that criteria. This news isn’t limited to a subreddit. This news is everywhere, suggesting any vote flood is more likely natural and organic than not.

What Robinhood is doing now is unethical and illegal. By limiting to users to only selling these stocks Robinhood is manipulating the market.

Citadel is a major source of funding for Robinhood. Citadel owns Melvin Capital Management. Melvin Capital Management is on the hook for billions in losses for their GameStop shorts.

How can it be more clear than this? People should be warned away Robinhood after this. Robinhood & Citadel should both be sued for manipulation of securities.

Robinhood was always owned by the same Wall Street fat cats its users hate. They even sell the data on what retail investors are buying in real time to allow industry investors to take advantage of it.

If anything it’s amazing that it took this long for anyone to notice.

It's honest reviews though? I had a 5 star rating on the app and loved it. After what they've done today, I am switching brokers, and changed my review to 1 star. I would honestly no longer recommend Robinhood to anyone.

A stock trading app that encourages you to trade options, and then randomly(?) closes your positions should not only have a 1 star review, it should not be allowed to operate.

Actually, given that RH is currently only allowing people to sell their positions, and not buy into them, the only correct step is for the app stores to only allow RH to be uninstalled, and to block any new installations. All for the financial well-being of their users, of course.

It would seem Google should remove the app from the store since it does not do what it claims to do.

An app claiming to be a stock trading app that doesn't allow trades for a NASDAQ listed stock isn't really a stock trading app.

By mob you mean the users who are justifiably upset the app is not working as expected by not allowing them to buy and forcing sales without user permission.

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