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Comment by cowllin | Hacker News Reader

Too little too late as far as brand reputation. Feels like #DeleteUber on steroids.

Mark my words - Robinhood is going to be fine and it will have negligible impact. They have a strong product and better than anyone else in the market as a mobile app.

How are they going to deal with the fact half of their reviews on Google Play are 1 star, and their average is now 1.x star? Google isn't going to bend over backwards for them to delete legitimate user reviews.

Android isn't the largest share of smart phone users in the US, and it's still 5 stars on the iOS app store.

Robinhood is only available in the US.

Which is why I qualified that. The numbers I've found indicate smartphone users, in the US, favor iOS (greater than 50% market share). So 1-star reviews in one of two app stores, and the app store with fewer users, won't be the thing that undoes Robinhood.

The same reason it didn't effect Facebook. Ratings don't matter for apps that are already household names. There's also no comparable alternative.

What about Webull? Seems like they serve the same market.

https://www.webull.com/

Review recency matters in both app stores, AFAIK. It'll end up back wherever it would normally be as the review bomb ages out.

It's a pretty product but calling it "strong" is very generous. It goes down constantly and I'd personally never trust more than a few hundred bucks to the platform. It's by far one of the worst brokerages in terms of execution and reliability.

You’re right. They’ve got some issues, but there is nothing else like it out there that’s easy for newbies to invest despite of reliability issues.

But they've taken themselves out of the newbie market. Newbies now see them as shady. Potential newbies now see them as shady.

I think you're drastically underestimating the reputational hit they took today.

I've seen these things come and go. #DeleteUber, no one gives a shit about it anymore.

Perhaps, you're drastically overestimating the hit they took today? Let's mark this comment and check after 6 months or a year.

DeleteUber was entirely different thing. A boycott attempt driven by social justice issues. This is something that negatively impacted over half of Robinhood's customers in a very direct manner. Not at all comparable.

Sure, let's check back in a year.

You make a fair point noting the differences of motivation behind the boycott.

It’s not meant for day trading; it’s meant for investing.

There's no need for a Capital-I Investment App to be on mobile. You should be doing research on a bigger screen, and when its time to execute trades you shouldn't be doing them on the shitter and shouldn't care if its executed at 9am or 4pm or the next day.

The Robinhood app is totally designed to suck Millennials into daytrading on their mobiles.

Not everyone has a laptop or a desktop. And you can do plenty of research on a phone or iPad.

>They have a strong product and better than anyone else in the market as a mobile app. reply

Guess you've never heard of ThinkOrSwim. RH is a toy. It's fine for most purposes, but not much more than fine. They consistently fill orders at a sub-optimal price and the amount of downtime is a joke.

This hurts them and I think you're wrong about their future. They're helping to screw over the very people who have made them successful. We'll see what the actual fallout is given their relationship to Citadel and Citadel's relationship with Melvin Cap.

I have. ThinkOrSwim (TDA) is amazing. But they’re operating in a different segment. Newbies would be overwhelmed in using TOS.

Do they have any sort of moat, though? What stops Fidelity or Schwab from hiring 10 iPhone devs and making their app just as fun and easy to use?

A great app means nothing in the face of treating your users with blatant contempt.

RHs told it's users 'you are our product. Do as you are told.'

People are not as stupid as they're made out to be and they have some self respect and dignity.

RH has mortally wounded itself.

Fair enough. I've immediately liquidated everything in my RH account (I wasn't trading GME or AMC), and I'm waiting to withdraw my funds before I close my account and never touch their app again.

There are plenty of brokers, and web-based brokerages work better than a mobile app for me anyway.

Note for others if you want to transfer to another broker you may be better to sign up elsewhere first, then do an ACATS transfer from your other broker of your entire Robinhood account. This avoids closing positions and reopening them creating a tax event. Just screenshot / save all your lots and cost basis first in case there is an issue loading them at the other end (that’s rare).

If it's true half their current user base is long on GME I can't see it not having much impact. Not that handling them today better would have saved them from all the impending fury of people losing big on the way down anyway.

Whatever they said was going to be ignored by people still furiously insisting that Melvin Capital lied about closing their position yesterday, but you'd have thought they could have got that statement out faster than the rumours too.

In the long run? Probably. Short term I think this at least delays their IPO.

I know they've lost me as a customer (and I actually pay for gold and margin). I was a huge fan of Robinhood and have been using them for nearly 5 years.

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