Earlier this week Robinhood trading app froze trading on shares of GameStop, AMC and other stocks whose prices exploded by day traders who pumped the stocks.
Robinhood users then flooded the Google Play Store and gave Robinhood a 1 rating following the move.
That’s when Google jumped in and deleted nearly 100,000 user reviews for the trading app.
It’s just big tech doing its thing.
The New York Post reported:
Google appeared to remove nearly 100,000 negative reviews for the Robinhood app after outraged investors bombarded the stock-trading startup with complaints.
Amateur traders urged each other online to leave negative reviews for the app in the Google Play Store after Robinhood froze trading on shares of GameStop and other stocks whose prices have exploded this week.
The campaign appeared to work — Robinhood’s Android app had a one-star rating based on nearly 275,000 reviews on Thursday, according to a screenshot captured by 9to5Google.
But that number had fallen to just over 176,000 by midday Friday as Google apparently purged the bad reviews, bringing Robinhood’s rating back up to roughly four stars.
Google said it removes reviews under policies that prohibit users from manipulating an app’s average star rating. The tech titan says it has longstanding systems in place to detect abuse of the review system, including reviews that are coordinated or inorganic, regardless of their content.
