23
Report Reddit To FTC for Posting Fake Revies (reportfraud.ftc.gov)
submitted 1 year ago by Andojus@lemmy.world to c/reddit@lemmy.world
41 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Reddit has started posting purchased 5 star reviews on Apple Store, wouldn’t be surprised if they were doing on Android as well. This is illegal and you can voice your dissatisfaction with the FTC at the provided link.

top 41 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] NABDad@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

If they're trying to do it in the Google Play Store, it isn't working. I've never seen so many detailed, comprehensive 1 & 2 star reviews for any app. You just scroll and scroll and it's nothing but people describing in great detail what a turd the app is.

Seems to be all from people who decided to try the official app when spez pulled this crap and discovered that there was a reason no one used it.

[-] Andojus@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I’m glad they’re not doing it there… the Apple Store has a bunch with nonsense one line sentences with no grammar or punctuation. One of them even references a different app.

[-] KuroJ@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I’ve noticed that too after writing my negative review, lots of fake positive reviews. I’ve also seen a lot of negative reviews under recent and the rating is still showing 4.8 for me on the Apple Store

[-] TheMightyBlu@feddit.uk 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The rating has dropped from 3.5 stars yesterday to 2.5 stars today, and that's probably still dropping. Lots of paragraph long, detailed reviews.

[-] BottleUpAndExplode@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

It has a 3.4 rating when I look at it.

[-] luna@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I think it depends on the region (and possibly type of device?)

[-] 314xel@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I've heard this before, but a few days ago I saw it was at 4.2 and today is at 4.0 on Google Play. Am I seeing a different rating than everyone else? I don't get it.

Screenshot

[-] TheMightyBlu@feddit.uk 1 points 1 year ago

Strange, that's definitely different from what I'm seeing, I'm not sure why that could be. Google might only show localised review scores? Screenshot here

[-] 314xel@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yep, seems like it. Another shitty thing by Google. So I'm not seeing an average of 2M reviews, the fucking count that's placed just below the score, purposefully to mislead me, but god knows how many hundreds of reviews of the same old phone model that I use. And who knows how "recent" or how broad that "region" is.

[-] Drewfro66@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Have to say I don't see why this is a bad thing. You don't want your impression of an app misled by 5 million Indians saying "The Hindi translation is garbage 🤬". Or if you're downloading an ebook reader on a tablet, you don't want reviews from smartphone users saying "The mobile version is unusable, the buttons are too small!"

[-] ZambiblasianOgre@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

That is such a Google design decision. So pointlessly stupid indeed.

[-] bappity@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

it's possible you're only seeing the reviews from your region

[-] AnActualFossil@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Quite possible. Google is indeed clearly massaging the result, most likely according to location. I get a 3.6 score here at the time of this post.

[-] abbadon420@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Yes, google only shows localized review scores.

[-] Heastes@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I'm taking bets on how long it takes for Google to remove those 1 & 2-star reviews because some automated review bombing algorithm kicks in.

[-] Yoryo@kbin.social -1 points 1 year ago

The 5 stars are being drowned in negative reviews. Filter reviews to 5 stars and sort by recent. Check out the dates and what is said. Not assuming what is happening but it is sketchy.

[-] alansuspect@aussie.zone 3 points 1 year ago

I checked one of the 5-star reviews, at the end:

That being said, it's nothing amazing. It's just fine, it does what it does. I have nothing against it.

High praise indeed.

[-] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

Coincidentally, that's exactly how I describe my toilet.

[-] Bozicus@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago

I think my toilet is better than Reddit's app. And my toilet has a broken thingamajig that means I have to take off the lid and move a lever to get it to flush at least twice a week.

[-] MagnumDovetails@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Idk, I just checked the App Store and if you sort reviews as most recent they are almost all 1 star

[-] MagnumDovetails@lemmy.world -2 points 1 year ago

*Apple Store

[-] snazzy0933@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I agree most of the recent reviews are 1-star. Even so, the app has 2.7M reviews with a 4.8 average rating. The bad reviews don’t seem to be noticeable yet unfortunately.

[-] luthis@lemmy.nz 2 points 1 year ago

The same should be done for IMDB if anyone can be bothered. I see so much of this for shitty Netflix series. 'The first episodes kind of suck but it gets better.' 10/10

-_-

[-] lowleveldata@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago

Protip: any TV shows with a boring 1st episode is only going to get worse

[-] greybeard@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I disagree. Star Trek: The Next Generation takes almost 2 seasons to get good. Perhaps TNG is an exception though, not the rule.

[-] R00bot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 year ago

Bojack Horseman is the exception to this. First season feels like a mediocre Family Guy-type show, then after that it's just banger after banger.

[-] Gamers_Mate@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Damn how many laws has spez broken now? Anyone keeping track?

[-] DpwnShift@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

He's rich AF. The laws don't apply to him!

[-] Sinnerman@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

He's not even rich AF. I mean, he's definitely richer than I am, but he's not Bezos-level rich. He sold out his one good creation, had thousands of people doing millions of dollars of free work for him, is a tech CEO, and betrayed the people who believed in him, just to become moderately wealthy. Sad!

[-] Andojus@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

And you just know this shit is going to follow him for life. Rich people tend to be smart and have long memories.

Can you imagine walking into Cannes and all of the other rich people point, look, and laugh under their breath?

Or walking past /spez’s 45” Bayliner sniggering about how he thinks he’s made it with his ‘yacht’.

If the pitchforks ever come out I would hate to be in his shoes.

[-] TIN@feddit.uk 2 points 1 year ago

Ysk, you can edit post titles in Lemmy

[-] ActuallyRuben@actuallyruben.nl 1 points 1 year ago

I like jumping on the bandwagon as much as the next guy, but do you have any evidence of these accusations?

[-] Andojus@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Only the evidence I put in my comments, all of the recent 5 star reviews have no constructive information in them other than a few random words.

They look really suspicious and the FTC would be able to verify their authenticity.

[-] justhach@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

If you go on the play store and look at the 5 star reviews vs. 1 star reviews, is does look a little suspect.

All the 1 star reviews are almost at the character limit, describing in detail why they gave it 1 star.

At least half the 5 star reviews are one sentence reviews like "interesting content", "Works great! Thanks!!", "Its good", "I love it!", and "veri gud ep" (sic).

[-] Lakija@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I put a link below but here is another to a screenshot I took. https://imgur.com/a/QDDcxk8

[-] tourist@community.destinovate.com 1 points 1 year ago

This has to be a huge no-no for companies looking to go public. Because they're intentionally reporting metrics about their app downloads and reviews that they know to be fake.

this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
23 points (100.0% liked)

Reddit

17443 readers
108 users here now

News and Discussions about Reddit

Welcome to !reddit. This is a community for all news and discussions about Reddit.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules

Rule 1- No brigading.

**You may not encourage brigading any communities or subreddits in any way. **

YSKs are about self-improvement on how to do things.

Rule 2- No illegal or NSFW or gore content.

**No illegal or NSFW or gore content. **

Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.

Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.

Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.

Rule 6- Regarding META posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-Reddit posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.

Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.

:::spoiler Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
_MoveSwiftly@lemmy.world
Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world
ja2@lemmy.world
Rooki@lemmy.world
L3s@lemmy.world