Google removed at least 100,000 negative reviews of the Robinhood stock trading app from the Google Play app store after angry users sent a barrage of critical reviews that caused the app’s rating to plummet on Thursday. The app rating went from about four out of five stars on Wednesday to just one star on Thursday. Robinhood users were understandably upset after the company stopped buying GameStop shares and other actions promoted by Reddit’s WallStreetBets community.
A Google spokesman confirmed that the tech giant deleted the reviews and defended the change overnight, telling Gizmodo via email that it has rules against “coordinated or inorganic analysis” Gizmodo asked how negative reviews can be considered “inorganic” when people seem reasonably upset by Robinhood’s actions in the past few days. Google stopped responding to Gizmodo emails after this survey.
Robinhood’s rating on the Google Play app store has risen to more than four stars since Google deleted negative reviews. The app also has a rating of 4.7 in the Apple app store, although it is unclear what kind of moderation Apple did in its analysis of Robinhood this week.
There are still doubts about what really led Robinhood to stop buying stock chosen by Reddit’s WallStreetBets on Thursday – actions that include not only GameStop, but Nokia, Blackberry and AMC Theaters, among others. One of the first theories was that the hedge funds that had short sold depended on Robinhood to stop trading, but an alternative theory emerged that Robinhood simply had no cash flow to continue processing so many stock purchases.
This latter theory appears to have been reinforced by a new report on Friday New York Times claiming that Robinhood raised about $ 1 billion from existing investors like Sequoia Capital and Ribbit Capital. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev denied that the company is experiencing liquidity problems in CNBC yesterday, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t anticipating liquidity problems in the very near future.
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Robinhood users annoyed by the company’s decision to suspend GameStop purchases filed a class lawsuit on Thursday, a move that seems to give credence to the idea that a negative rating of the app on Google Play is not necessarily “inorganic”.
It was a turbulent week in the stock market, as activist investors on Reddit showed that the whole system is a scam in favor of the rich. But no one knows where that will leave the US financial markets in the coming days and weeks.
Most Americans know in their hearts that the game is fraudulent. But this week’s actions by activist investors on Reddit really made the rules clear for the whole world to see. The rich do not tolerate that ordinary people make money while suffering.
The question is to what extent are hedge fund managers and other wealthy people willing to do this to defend their class interests. If history is any guide, the answer is “too far”.