Honest question: why does Google care here? They don't really have a stake in the GME situation, with no short or long positions (I'm assuming). They aren't that connected to Wall Street companies. Why protect Robinhood at all?
At the time no one strongly protested the move by Valve, but in the context of this situation with Google, Robinhood, and WSB it seems to have hit a particular nerve.
A far better approach than just removing the reviews outright if you ask me.
That's not to say Robinhood didn't deserve poor reviews or Steam hiding it is good but it definitely has seemed to strike more of a nerve with Robinhood even though both were very similar.
Are they? This feels identical to a few people organically getting mad and then people bandwagoning.
That might be inclusion of a pervasive anti-cheat, a poor comment made by a developer, or most recently a movie tie-in that included an offensive line.
These reviews are not removed but they stop contributing to the overall review score.
Just guessing, obviously, and I'm not sure how the contours of such a policy would work. Clearly organic bad reviews will often be correlated with each other, and with negative news.
Or automated system
That would be wrong but believable. I read some of the reviews, they did look very similar in ways beyond describing the same problems.
But I'm good with assuming malice, it seems like every company that takes action right now is unlikely to be doing it coincidentally. Maybe Google is doing it because of money somehow, hopefully it's an actual mistake that they'll fix. I suspect the former.
You want to try to avoid the mob jumping in on the reviews of something they never used because of some bad news.
Lol. Sure they aren't.
Many of the managers and workers at Google? Quite likely have a stake in what goes down on Wall Street.
On balance, I really think this is just an automated system that's being conservative. Would you be in any way surprised that Google would have such a thing looking for big impulses in activity?
What I do know is that Google doesn't remove reviews for just anyone. They don't remove Play Store reviews and they do not remove Google Local reviews. Even if an app or a company is birdgaded due to bad news that is someone's opinion.
Hopefully, Google can 1) Send out something explaining their action and 2) Provide regular folks the ability to have reviews removed.
I just gave a 1-star review on the iOS app store and am currently pulling all my money out of my RH account, because I don't like how RH is behaving.
People all thinking something is shit is not manipulation, its just collective agreement.
1. That's not how people treat reviews (people will leave a positive review if they love the business but the app is crap), so it's misleading to only enforce such an ideal here, with negative reviews.
2. In this case, the business effectively is the app, at least from the user's perspective. The app wouldn't let me even look at GME/AMC today, much less buy it. That's not what I want from a stock trading app, because it's an annoying experience that leaves a sour taste in my mouth, so 1-star it is.
It's one thing for the company to make choices that people disagree with but don't affect the actual functionality of the App. This could be environmental policies, partnering with a controversial government, using tax loopholes, etc. People going on brigades to review bomb an App for these types of issues are what should be protected against. Mass shifts in public opinion due to actual changes in how the App behaves should not be protected against.
Mass shifts in public opinion due to actual changes in how the App behaves is not brigading nor retaliation and should not be protected against.
1. It tends to retard technical progress.
2. They have to make deals with entrenched incumbents to do finance.
3. There's nothing stopping a hedge fund manipulating Alphabet's stock.
On the other hand avoiding review bombing is a Google Play store business objective, doing it in a half assed reactive way with an algorithm is Google's style, and of course it's also Google's style to not care about customer service nearly enough to wade into a debate about whether a pile on related to genuine upset with an app company's policy is really review bombing
Keep in mind AWS is about to take on Twitter account and they took out Parler, an up and coming competitor overnight.
There is another angle though - may be RH or some higher power is threatening to sue Google if they didn't help cleanup based on their own terms, which might have clause of active sabotage - I am sure they claim this is one such event.
RH didn't pay anything. Google knows what to do. The interests are way deeper than some pocket change moving around...