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Comment by drexlspivey | Hacker News Reader

A similar one is asking you to rate the app via the native modal (which does nothing) and if you rate with 5 stars they redirect you to the app store to vote there (where it counts). If you rate them with 1-3 stars they prompt you to leave feedback instead.

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I agree that this is a dark pattern, but I also empathise with whoever first implemented this. Negative reviews are often just "this doesn't work", no further information. That's not actionable at all as a developer, and even if you somehow do fix the underlying issue, it's pretty difficult (or impossible) to get people to update their reviews.

The only problems here are the use of UI that mimics the native one and opening the App Store without users intent.

It's actually a good idea to ask the user for feedback internally, a lot of low star reviews are bug reports or help requests that wouldn't help anyone(those who don't have the app yet wouldn't know how relevant that issue is for them and the developers won't have a channel to communicate and help the user who is having the issues).

> It's actually a good idea to ask the user for feedback internally, a lot of low star reviews are bug reports or help requests that wouldn't help anyone

But importantly ask the user once, and only once, do not force the user to leave a review. Doing so will lead to more one star reviews along the lines of “wouldn’t stop asking for a review”

Also I immediately hate any app asking for a review. It may be useful for the developer but it’s user hostile imo.

That's really about the relationship with the user and timing of the request. The best practice is to ask user for a favour right after something good happens and they get value from your app as they will be glad that this app exists. You first give something to the user and ask the user to give you something back later, like "If you like the app please give us a review, it helps a lot" request. It's not a coincidence that all the successful YouTubers ask for a like and subscription if you like the video.

Interrupting a user action on the other hand, asking for a review over and over again are extremely annoying and can easily backfire. For the official review UI, Apple enforces "2 times per year per user per app" restrictions but if you annoy the user enough through your self made review request dialogs, they can get angry enough to find their way into your App Store page and give you 1 star review.

Forcing the user do something, trying to coerce them into a 5 star review in order to use the app backfires easily.

> hat's really about the relationship with the user and timing of the request. The best practice is to ask user for a favour right after something good happens and they get value from your app as they will be glad that this app exists.

There’s that user hostility again! Also I’m not sure how the YouTube example is related. When a YouTuber says hit subscribe the user can take a second to do it. They don’t stop what they’re doing and get forwarded to a different website entirely.

I recall experiencing at least one application that would crash if you declined to rate it in the app store. I'm sure it was just shoddy implementation, not handling some condition correctly, but it was hard not to feel like it was intentional.

IIRC didn't Apple or Google start banning apps that did this?

On a related note, Google Maps has on occasion deleted reviews from businesses that used software that employed this tactic for requesting reviews. I’ve seen several businesses lose hundreds of five star reviews because of it.

To a certain extent I can't blame apps for doing this. It would be much better for Android and iOS to have a better experience for leaving feedback or giving reviews.

Dunno about android but on iOS it really is quite trivial if you use the native dialog.

That's clever

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