Google deletes 1-star reviews, saves Robinhood app rating from massive nosedive

On Friday, Google finally stepped in to intervene in a nasty reprisal from disgruntled Robinhood users, who, livid with the stock trading app’s actions, had downvoted the app to a one-star rating on the Play Store. The company has now deleted just over one lakh reviews from the app’s listing, according to reports.

As 9to5Google reported earlier today, tens of thousands of users flooded Robinhood’s app listing on Google’s store with one star reviews, after it prevented users from further buying of controversial shares from companies AMC and GameStop. The barrage of negative ratings was so heavy that after a few hours, the app’s respectable four star rating was down to one star.

The disappointment of users with Robinhood probably came from the feeling that the very service that had empowered investors from Main Street to wreak havoc on Wall Street had blocked them from trading once the repercussions of their actions appeared to be serious. While Robinhood had later clarified that they had restricted trading in those stocks for ‘risk management’, users had already made up their minds that the app was protecting Wall Street investors who could trade in those shares outside of the app.

Also read: GameStop’s wild ride has Indian retail traders joining in

After it was evident that the apps rating had taken a nosedive due to the disgruntled users, Google finally had to step in, deleting over one lakh accounts, according to 9to5Google. At the time of writing this article, Robinhood’s rating were back up to 4.0 stars on the Google Play Store with 1.71 lakh reviews. However, quite a few one-star reviews were still pouring in since Google’s last purge - it remains to be seen if Google will remove those as well.

The reviews were likely from the original group of r/WallStreetBets Redditors that started the entire GameStop and AMC episode that saw hedge fund Melvin Capital nearly wiped out after they upset the market by buying shares of two companies and grossly inflating their monetary value. Tesla CEO Elon Musk also tweeted support for the investors, after initially tweeting out the subreddit itself and the word “Stonks” (slang for stocks) with a link to the subreddit where the original plan to tackle the hedge fund was born.