Reddit is buyng 5 star reviews.

They're also definitely doing some sort of keyword manipulation, cause the official Reddit App is fairly high in the result list when searching for Lemmy.
On another note: hi, I just came here today after RIF stopped working 👋
- They're also definitely doing some sort of keyword manipulation, cause the official Reddit App is fairly high in the result list when searching for Lemmy.
  In the organic results or the paid results? It's pretty common for competitors to buy your name in search term sales.
  
  It’s pretty common for competitors to buy your name in search term sales.
  The famous example been Pizza Hut buying ads on searches for Domino's
  
  It's 6th for me when I search lemmy. Visible at the bottom of the list before starting to scroll. Definitely a regular listing as far as I can tell.
- Welcome!
  
  I'm here full time too since I got connect.

One bot's review is referring to Reddit as Tripomate. Lol oh reddit...
- Lol that's hilarious!
- Lol thats gold.

After seeing this, I thought I'd go over to the Play Store to leave a 1 star review. Then discovered I had already left a 1 star review (complaining about their shitty interface) a few months ago, which I'd totally forgotten about ;-)
- I did exactly the same.
  Went in with a "fuck spez" attitude and turns out I'd already had a fuck spez moment when I picked up sync after finding the Reddit app garbage.
  
  I never managed to get it to load anything on my 380mbps internet connection. Every 3rd party app (and the website) loaded fine.
- That was exactly what I did too
  "Oh...I already gave it 1 star...good"
  
  Past-self high-five.
  (my first lemmy comment let's gooo)

We should report them as fake. Not sure how many reports it takes to get someone to look at it but it might be worth a shot.
- Imagine if Reddit, after cutting off so many 3rd party apps got their own app banned. Even if only temporarily.
  
  Delicious
  
  I wouldn't be surprised, the reddit "leadership" has shown it's either their way or the highway even if their way leads to a cliff.
  
  I just came to that
  
  Delicious
- People must be doing that, I scrolled for a bit and didn't see a single 5 star review. The best part is most reviews call out exactly the same problems as my 1 star review from 2018. Very few even seem to mention the API or 3rd party apps. What have they been doing for 5 years?
  
  Pushing awards and micro transactions for Snoos and not making a functional app with sleek and in line advertising placement
- I reported some of the ones I saw on the App Store but I doubt it will do much good.
- I’ve been reporting the ones I see on the Apple App Store

I feel like I must be crazy but these reviews do not read like 5 star reviews. Seems super suspect.
- You’re right. One specifically mentions ‘would rate this 0 if I could’ so in lieu of that option, they selected a…5?
  Have they gone through and scraped the text from a bunch of real reviews and are reposting them with 5 star ratings to make them look organic?
  
  That honestly sounds to be the likely scenario. If someone saw the review they might shrug it off as an error or mistake.

Reddit is completely astroturfed now. Nothing but bots and humans that act like bots.
- it's not just that reddit turned into a huge greedy corpo-clusterfuck when they went public, it was kinda bad before that too and held bad practices. Lemmy has a lot of the same features that made reddit shit on a fundamental level.
  The up-vote downvote system itself is a both a curse and blessing. it's sorts things decently but it encourages mediocrity and bot like behaviour in people, if one likes to put it that way. It makes discussing anything controversial and where the issue isn't black or white, impossible. Good for cat pics and tits, but really bad for politics and the like, because everything eventually floats towards some status quo and everybody and everything else is sidelined and encouraged to shut up or go with the flow or face downvote barrage.
  Also the bots are here, not yet, but they will be. Bots are easy to make here too. If this place ever gets even decently popular this place will get astroturfed and up-vote manipulated just like reddit. it's too easy to manipulated community opinion or shill for issues or things in site like this. Federated structure might help or make it worse.
  
  They're not even public yet lmao. And reddit got started by using bots to post content from RSS feeds to make it look busier than it was.
  
  I hear that instances can disable downvoting in Lemmy's configuration. Maybe this is some solution to this issue.
  
  on the desktop lemmy ui there is an option to hide scores
  it doesn’t completely solve the vote issue since most people don’t use it ( I assume), but I find my experience more enjoyable when I don’t know what scores a post or comment has
  
  The main reason sites have upvote/downvote features is to create confrontation and conflict. They want us yelling at each other and insulting each other because that engages more people and makes them more money.
  Social media companies are the scum of the fucking earth. Tech needs to be much more heavily regulated than it is. It's long past time to put these intentionally destructive fatcat sociopaths in their place.
  
  I hear that instances can disable downvoting in Lemmy's configuration. Maybe this is some solution to this issue.
  
  I hear that instances can disable downvoting in Lemmy's configuration. Maybe this is some solution to this issue.
- what i fear is that reddit will take completely unnecessary but effective potshots at the fediverse and take down instances or fill them with bots just to punish those who made a point of leaving.
  
  I expect it from reddit, Twitter and Facebook. This is a competitive service, and it's not backed by a rich person that can swing money around to discover their behavior and sue them. They'll likely be doing some shady stuff to make sure this either doesn't work, or is under their control.
  
  Even if they do that, I'm still not returning to reddit.
- This is the future of corporate internet.
- From what I've seen is all the shitty people remained on Reddit

Lmao I saw a 5 star review that said the official app was "better than any 3rd party app", that it had "non-intrusive ads", and asking for an ads toggle for premium users to be able to support reddit. I can't even tell if it's some sort of elaborate sarcasm. Wild.

Currently 2.4/5.0 on the Play Store. Wasn't that long ago when it was around 4.0. Their rating has taken a beating over the last few weeks.
- Before the API pricing change, the Reddit app could be considered an internal hobby project made by a handful of employees on their spare time.
  Now that this one is mandatory, it can be rated for what it is.
- I for sure helped with the beating.

Wow, they're really spezzing it up!

This reminds to give reddit 1 star on Playstore.
- Same here
- Me too.

Just leave my first 1 star to reddit app
- I'm going to leave my own review now too

That's how you know that they know that the vocal minority might become a vocal majority.

just left a 1 star review, because it honestly deserves it

They just continue to validate my decision to walk away
- Right?

Can't say I'm even remotely surprised. It's unfortunate that even user reviews have become all but useless on most platforms due to corpo bullshit like this.
- good things corporations are people too so their votes they paid for count right?
  
  I don't really understand what this has to do with lobbying, but sure.
  
  I don't really understand what this has to do with lobbying, but sure.
  
  I don't really understand what this has to do with lobbying, but sure.
  
  I don't really understand what this has to do with lobbying, but sure.
  
  I don't really understand what this has to do with lobbying, but sure.
  
  I don't really understand what this has to do with lobbying, but sure.
- good things corporations are people too so their votes they paid for count right?

Isn't buying reviews/fake users something a struggling new startup does, not something that has been around for > 10 years. This is kinda sad (if indeed these are bought reviews).
Is this screenshot from Apple or Google stores (I don't know what either look like to be honest). I wonder if the same thing is happening on the other store now too.
- Older than that, my account is 16 years old…I came from the Digg exodus and it existed for a short while before that.
  
  16 Year Club checking in!
  
  Spez said that reddit has been around for 18 years

I was seeing this today too! I’m reporting all those comments to the App Store, I hope it does something

Ironic that the FTC is going to likely make these illegal soon. Anyone want to save screenshots?

Just left a 1 star review and reported a bunch of their obviously fake 5 star reviews

No. It’s the new bot users rating their new favorite app.
- I look forward to reading turf wars between Dominos, Pizza Hut, Coca Cola and Pepsi bots, all powered by ChatGPT, arguing their bot rage across Digg, Meta, Twitter and Reddit.
  And I look forward to reading all about it through ActivityPub.

They also blocked rating the app on mobile, I had to go online and rate it via google's site, and im not sure it actually stuck.
- My negative reviews of any app are usually deleted, even if I take the time to write out a lot.

Done my part too, hope they get review bombed 💣

I just gave them a 1. Doing my part.

I gave it a 1 star review. I'm doing my part o7
- I gave it also a 1 star review with the mention "One of the apps ever. Very popular and well-known". Also doing my part o7
- Just left mine. Fuck u/spez

Not even surprised at this point

Anything to boost that IPO huh.

My old 5 star review became 1 star this morning. And like this will remain. Spez can buy the whole Chinese review-farm black market, the end is the end, the corpse is now smelling and will smell until it's buried.

They just continue to validate my decision to walk away

Been happening for sometimes most new 5 star review don't even make sense there is one saying something like this app is surely a big bouncy ball.

My old 5 star review became 1 star this morning. And like this will remain. Spez can buy the whole Chinese review-farm black market, the end is the end, the corpse is now smelling and will smell until it's buried.
- Your comment got posted a bunch of times. I didn't expect lemmy to glitch like reddit lol
  
  Guessing they hit the post button a bunch of times because some of the UI controls really aren't visually responsive on many of the Lemmy instances.

Am I confused, or isn't this a duplicate post in this same sub/instance?

Installed reddit app to do my part 🫡
- Same here and i actually was going to take a quick look, but, for my surprise, you can't scroll Reddit through it's own app without logging in.

Funny story I was gonna go make a 1 star review in response to this and found out I already submitted one over a year ago!
So I guess instead I'll go and mark only 1 star reviews as helpful (maybe also a few 5 star reviews in cyrillic script, just for fun.)

Would be weird if they didn't at least try to do this
- Yeah, all big companies do this, to my understanding

Anything to boost that IPO huh

I have been continually surprised by how low Reddit is willing to sink.
I should stop being shocked at such despicable behaviour.

Am I confused, or isn't this a duplicate post in this same sub/instance?
- OP posted in 2 different technology subs on different instances lol

The last time it was posted I investigated the reviews on Google play, and every rating was made by a real person, or a bot impersonating the real person. There is no way to tell appart except by contacting the person.
Avoid falling into a circle jerk, we are better than this.
- Is that second one not what you would do if you were trying to generate reviews that would pass automated checks? The hard part is deciding if the fake reviews were requested/bought/generated by Reddit or if they're an independent bot network trying to establish legitimacy or mask directed action.
  
  Or just when there is a movement a protests there is always a bunch of people against the protest.
  Bunch of redditors are pissed off that we ruin their addiction.
  In the account I checked, somes had a selfie of themselves that werent indexed on google yet. To me it point out it's more likely a genuine account