Apple appears to be manipulating its own App Store ratings

Relevant excerpt:

"...How can you salvage your reputation? Apple just found one incredibly effective way — get listeners to submit better reviews by interrupting their podcast experience with an in-app prompt to submit a rating.

That’s how the Apple Podcasts app went from a publicly embarrassing 1.8-star score all the way to 4.6 stars in a little over a month without any actual fixes..."

Why do people still care about the App Store ecosystem?

Apple has made it profitable only for mobile games. Since 2015, 99% of large successful companies have started on web.

> [Apple] is using the same broken star score system that uplifts scammers for its own benefit as well. And it’s a crystal clear example of why you can’t trust star scores

> I wondered if maybe this was a common confusion with podcast apps, where listeners think they’re reviewing a podcast instead of the app itself. But no, I didn’t see that obvious pattern when I checked reviews for other top podcast apps in the App Store.

The rating popup is “enjoying {appname}” .. seems understandable considering this app name is “podcasts”

I mean if the goal was to hide bad reviews they could've done so already like they did when Robinhood pissed its users off. There has to be more to this than just wanting to improve the score of a built in app.