The investment app Robinhood has fallen back to a one-star rating on Google Play, thanks to a flood of thousands of new negative reviews.
The latest low rating comes just days after Google scored the app’s rating by removing nearly 100,000 reviews, following a flood of negative ratings after Robinhood last week bought popular shares at Reddit / r / WallStreetBets such as GameStop or AMC blocked. Google confirms to The edge at the moment it has actively removed negative reviews about the app.
The overarching rollercoaster for Robinhood’s onslaught was almost as up and down as GameStop’s share price. When users began reviewing the app’s application last Thursday, Robinhood reached a one-star rating with nearly 275,000 reviews. Google then removed nearly 100,000 of the reviews and put the app at an average of four stars with about 180,000 reviews. But since the publication of this article, Robinhood has returned to a new high of nearly 305,000 reviews, along with a 1.1-star rating.
Google’s Play Store policy prohibits explicit reviews intended to manipulate an app’s rating; the company had earlier removed Robinhood reviews because it felt it was violating the policy.
A Google spokesperson confirmed The edge that the current reviews – which were not removed during last week’s cleanup – comply with Google’s policies and will not be removed.
In a statement to The edge, Google commented on it ‘Google Play’s app review systems are designed to provide a true and reliable version of an app’s user experience, and we take action on any fraudulent or coordinated activity aimed at artificially increasing an app’s overall score or to lower. To put it bluntly, this is not done to protect an app from negative reviews, but to protect app developers from things like coordinated review bombings and to prevent our systems from being artificially manipulated. ‘
The low rating is unique to Google’s Play Store, at least for now. The iOS version of Robinhood still boasts a 4.0-star rating on Apple’s store window, although there has also been an increase in negative reviews for the app’s version in recent days.