Google Deletes 100,000 Negative Reviews of Robinhood App From Angry Users

(The AEGIS Alliance) – Google deleted no less than 100,000 unfavorable reviews of the stock buying and selling app Robinhood from the Google Play app store after angry customers left a flood of critical reviews that prompted the app’s rating to plummet on Thursday. The app’s rating went from roughly 4 stars out of 5 on Wednesday to only one star on Thursday. Robinhood customers have been understandably upset after the company halted purchases of GameStop’s stock and different shares promoted by Reddit’s WallStreetBets group.

A Google spokesperson confirmed the tech giant has deleted the reviews and defended the move in a single day, saying it has guidelines in opposition to “coordinated or inorganic reviews.” Google said the reviews are deemed “inorganic” when individuals appear understandably upset about Robinhood’s actions over the last few days.

Robinhood’s rating on the Google Play app store has rebounded to more than 4 stars since Google deleted the unfavorable opinions. Additionally, the app has a 4.7 rating on Apple’s app store, although it’s not clear what sort of moderation Apple has carried out this week of its reviews for Robinhood.

There are nonetheless questions on what really led Robinhood to halt purchases of stock shares picked by Reddit’s WallStreetBets on Thursday, shares that include not only GameStop however, but also Nokia, Blackberry, and AMC Theaters, amongst others. An early theory was that hedge funds that had shorted the stocks had leaned on Robinhood to halt buying and selling, however an alternate idea emerged that Robinhood merely didn’t have the money stream to continue processing that amount of stock share purchases.

The latter idea appears to have been bolstered by a brand new report early Friday from the New York Times that claims Robinhood has raised roughly $1 billion from existing traders like Sequoia Capital and Ribbit Capital. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev denied the business was having liquidity issues on CNBC yesterday, however that doesn’t imply it wasn’t anticipating liquidity issues within the near future.

Robinhood customers upset with the business’ choice to halt purchases of GameStop filed a class-action lawsuit on Thursday, a suit that would appear to provide credence to the concept that a damaging app rating on Google Play isn’t essentially “inorganic.”

It’s been a turbulent week on the stock trading market, as activist retail traders on Reddit have proven the whole system to be a rip-off in favor of the rich. But nobody is aware of where that may leave U.S. financial markets over the next coming days and weeks.

The majority of Americans know in their heart that the game is rigged. But this week’s actions by activist traders on Reddit have actually made the rules plain for the whole world to see. The rich are not going to tolerate average individuals earning profits while they suffer.

The question is how far hedge fund managers and different rich individuals are prepared to take this to defend their class interests. If the historical past is any guide, the answer is that they’ll take this pretty damn far.

You can sign up for the class-action lawsuit here on RosenLegal.com.

Kyle James Lee – The AEGIS Alliance – This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.