Apple taking steps to remove illegitimate reviews from App Store
Developers who try to game the App Store ratings system, mostly by paying for fraudulent reviews, must now contend with Apple as the iPhone maker is said to have begun a campaign to strike those entries from the marketplace in an apparent effort to level the playing field.
App Store reviews available for sale on the Fiverr marketplace
Apple has been intervening on a case-by-case basis for some time, though it is unclear when they began the push as it is not a publicly-announced process. The moves were first reported by TechCrunch.
The most recent developer to feel Apple's wrath was Daneco Ltd., makers of "spammy" app Better Fonts Free. The app was stripped of more than 15,000 fake reviews over night, a change that only Apple could implement.
According to the publication, Apple "often" intervenes when such trickery is discovered. Many fake reviewers are careless, taking little effort to cover their tracks and flooding the App Store with hundreds or thousands of 5-star reviews in a short time.
The practice of buying reviews has become more commonplace recently as fly-by-night developers look for a quick payday by getting their app to the top of the App Store sales charts. Such a position can be worth tens of thousands of dollars in earnings each day.
App Store reviews available for sale on the Fiverr marketplace
Apple has been intervening on a case-by-case basis for some time, though it is unclear when they began the push as it is not a publicly-announced process. The moves were first reported by TechCrunch.
The most recent developer to feel Apple's wrath was Daneco Ltd., makers of "spammy" app Better Fonts Free. The app was stripped of more than 15,000 fake reviews over night, a change that only Apple could implement.
According to the publication, Apple "often" intervenes when such trickery is discovered. Many fake reviewers are careless, taking little effort to cover their tracks and flooding the App Store with hundreds or thousands of 5-star reviews in a short time.
The practice of buying reviews has become more commonplace recently as fly-by-night developers look for a quick payday by getting their app to the top of the App Store sales charts. Such a position can be worth tens of thousands of dollars in earnings each day.
Comments
Heck yeah. They need to do the same to their physical products’ reviews.
Heck yeah. They need to do the same to their physical products’ reviews.
I stopped using ‘customer’ reviews of anything some years ago. It had become apparent that customer reviews are useless, rigged, and paid for. Samsung got caught red handed paying people to trash HTC. I vividly remember the day the iPhone was announced in 2007. C|net had a review section that was full of hundreds of negative comments from so-called users. Strange that the product wasn’t even available for sale yet.
These days I completely ignore the review sections. Funny that before the purchase of Beats by Apple their products were given generally acceptable reviews by so-called users. Once Apple bought Beats the reviews turned into spiteful, vitriolic, hate filled diatribes. Now only stupid people buy Beats products, the same stupid people who buy Apple products.
These days I completely ignore the review sections. Funny that before the purchase of Beats by Apple their products were given generally acceptable reviews by so-called users. Once Apple bought Beats the reviews turned into spiteful, vitriolic, hate filled diatribes. Now only stupid people buy Beats products, the same stupid people who buy Apple products.
The thing that I noticed is a lot is the 5 star reviews just say something like "Awesome App" where as the negative reviews often go into great detail of why they were dissatisfied, what didn't work, etc. It is pretty easy to tell which ones are fake and which ones are not.
About bloody time. I refuse to pay people to review my apps, but you are almost forced to if you want an app to do well as it currently stands.
The thing that I noticed is a lot is the 5 star reviews just say something like "Awesome App" where as the negative reviews often go into great detail of why they were dissatisfied, what didn't work, etc. It is pretty easy to tell which ones are fake and which ones are not.
So are you saying that negative reviews tend to be authentic while positive reviews tend to be fake? So Beats and Apple products really are the crappy junk the negative reviewers claim them to be?
Removing the fake and fraudulent reviews is not good enough.
The developers need to be severely punished. Removing the reviews is not even a slap on the wrist.
Developers should be banned for life from the Apple eco system if they are caught having fake reviews after being warned about it, and that would teach them a good lesson, and it will also scare any other developers away from doing the same in the future.
Removing the fake and fraudulent reviews is not good enough.
The developers need to be severely punished. Removing the reviews is not even a slap on the wrist.
Developers should be banned for life from the Apple eco system if they are caught having fake reviews after being warned about it, and that would teach them a good lesson, and it will also scare any other developers away from doing the same in the future.
I agree. Because I feel like I get punished for being honest for not using the fake reviews! It pisses me off.
Um, no. Because what you suggest would enable people to 'take out' a competitors app by posting fake reviews on it!!
I thought I read some time ago that Apple had talked about using an iPhone and your location to prevent fake reviews of restaurants or hotels. Basically your device had to actually visit (and spend time) at a location before you'd be allowed to submit a review. If you were at a restaurant over the lunch hour, then you could review it.
This would have a huge impact on the number of fake reviews, at it's just not worth someones time to "hang out" somewhere in person just to post a negative review. For hotels, you'd have to be there for a longer period of time before your iPhone would allow a review.
Now imagine this with iBeacons. A restaurant could have an iBeacon with their own personal ID number which would only allow you to post a review if you were in the vicinity of the iBeacon that matched the establishment. Or the iBeacon could just be there to issue a reminder like "Thanks for dining here, would you like to give us a quick review or rating?" while your iPhone still relied on GPS to make sure you really were there and didn't "clone" someones iBeacon/ID.
Um, no. Because what you suggest would enable people to 'take out' a competitors app by posting fake reviews on it!!
Apple could conduct an investigation into each claim, and when the evidence is clear that the fake reviews came from the developers themselves, then the appropriate action could be taken.
Apple could conduct an investigation into each claim, and when the evidence is clear that the fake reviews came from the developers themselves, then the appropriate action could be taken.
How many apps are there in the App Store? Sure, that shouldn't take long. </s>
How many apps are there in the App Store? Sure, that shouldn't take long. </s>
Smaller apps that don't sell anything are not a priority of course. I am talking about apps that actually sell a bit.
And Apple is huge, I expect Apple to have a safe, secure and honest appstore. They have the resources. This is not the wild, wild west like Google's app store, where basically anything goes.
No i'm saying that positive reviews that just say "Awesome" are either fake or simply useless as well as negative reviews that just say "Sucks" are equally worthless. When someone takes the time to thoughtfully explain their experience good or bad, that makes them look authentic. In the case of Beats, that to me seems like an unusual situation where, as you mentioned, "supposed users" could be an issue. Normally people don't have a vendetta when reviewing apps on the App Store and you have to be a validated owner of the app to even comment.
Honesty is a rare virtue it seems.
I'm convinced that probably 50% of all people (if not more) on the internet are liars, cheats and generally all around bad people.
Apple could conduct an investigation into each claim, and when the evidence is clear that the fake reviews came from the developers themselves, then the appropriate action could be taken.
I might just be missing something, but it's not obvious to me how Apple could investigate them in any depth? They're not going to be able to subpoena the developer's email accounts or financial statements, and the fake reviews will look the same regardless of who paid for them...
I might just be missing something, but it's not obvious to me how Apple could investigate them in any depth? They're not going to be able to subpoena the developer's email accounts or financial statements, and the fake reviews will look the same regardless of who paid for them...
I obviously haven't thought about this in depth, since I have never thought about this before I read this thread, but surely there must be some way for Apple to figure it out. Are the fake reviews mostly positive or negative? Where are the fake reviews coming from? Apple should record each IP submitting a review and use an intelligent algorithm to determine if they should be flagged or not.
I am just one guy without the resources that Apple has. I expect Apple to do more than I am able to think of, considering what they can bring to the table.
Just Beats- even Apple sales employees would say so - at lease prior to the acquisition.