Big Tech has played an active role in politics, helping preferred candidates like Joe Biden during the campaign through the suppression of stories about Hunter Biden’s shady foreign business dealings, and seeking revenge on political enemies like former President Donald Trump by kicking him off nearly all social media platforms. Now, Big Tech is turning its “helping” hand to Robinhood after the app halted trading of GameStop, AMC, and other names on Thursday. The move came after the surge of the stocks from retail investors caused billions in losses for certain hedge fund short sellers.
Users blasted Robinhood, with Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy arguing people should be in jail. Many deleted the app, others took their anger to the app’s review page, plunging it to a 1-star rating. But according to The Verge, Google stepped in to delete nearly 100,000 of those poor reviews, which helped bring Robinhood back to nearly four stars.
It’s not outside Google’s purview to delete these posts. Google’s policies explicitly prohibit reviews intended to manipulate an app’s rating, and the company says it has a system that “combines human intelligence with machine learning to detect and enforce policy violations in ratings and reviews.” Google says it specifically took action on reviews that it felt confident violated those policies, the company tells The Verge. Google says companies do not have the ability to delete reviews themselves. (The Verge)
Google salvaged Robinhood’s one-star rating by deleting nearly 100,000 negative reviews https://t.co/mFfLYpqNlr pic.twitter.com/t1SOVSpOPy
— The Verge (@verge) January 29, 2021
On Friday, Robinhood began allowing "limited buy of these securities" and said in a statement it will "monitor the situation and may make adjustments as needed."