Unless I'm missing something,that kind of masking behaviour is what typically causes me to exit an app and manually give it a low review. Are you saying you are actively gating the reviews? :-/

Pretty much exactly what Meriton was just fined AU$3m for today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17649912

As far as I know, the rule is, you can only show the native app-store review dialog once, if the user cancels, you won't get any review ever. So the idea is, to show your own until the user finally decides to review.

But now the growth hackers of the world had the brilliant idea to treat bad reviews like "the user isn't ready for a review"

It's good that android doesn't allow this. And it doesn't give a way for the app to find out if I actually rated also. So I just click yes i want to rate. Then come back and continue as usual.

Same with iOS, but I guess chances are good that people don't behave like you. (Even if I also think they should, haha)

Same with browser permissions. Websites would ask you if you're okay with the authorization and only if you answer Yes, they would trigger the browser auth prompt.

Pretty much.

Some app-store marketing guru told the startup I'm contracting with, that this is the way to go, because you're pretty much f*cked if you get reviews below 4.

This is an important point.

Basically, once some start gaming the system - the others have to follow or they are dead.

It's similar to how irregular migration or general screwing over of workers works: if some farmers are paying 'under wages' or some factories are 'undercutting' ... then the others stand to lose business and are sucked into the same practices.

It's one thing when a massively successful entity like Amazon does shady stuff, but for most businesses ... it seems to often be kind of a quandary.

everything naturally will gravitate toward people gaming the system. Its not just limited to shopping and reviews. Politics and social media behavior is not too different. If the option exist its going to be exploited, you either follow through or get left in the dust

Its sad that this is the way things are done but what can you do about it really? You can't fight every battle you need to pick what matters

I used to work for f2p game companies and they also used this as a standard trick. On top of suppressing negative reviews they would only ask you to rate the game immediately after something good happened in the game. You leveled up, or got a good prize, or whatever. They would craft these entire on-rails onboarding experiences where you seem to win a jackpot early on, then ask you for a review. They'd build out these flows and user test them and iterate until it psychologically produced the intended ratings

I’m not sure if it’s still the case, but Tinder used to ask for a review right after a successful match

I hope you at least anonymously reported that behavior to appropriate authorities. And started searching for a new job.

You don't always have the choice of just up and go. I developed a system for an american startup that gathered everything it could get its hands on through their Gmail accounts. Did I think that's unethical? Yes, but just quitting wasn't an option and it was perfectly legal. I switched to a new company when I could afford it and am now much happier. But suggesting to just quit the moment your company behaves unethical is a little optimistic.

It's not perfectly legal if you ever do it to an EU user, now. This is why GDPR has some upsides -- it changes what was formerly just unethical into being illegal, which means that we as software engineers can push back against it more strongly.

We actually developed a GDPR module for about three weeks to catch that case. So we are legal again, since we provide all the tools you need to delete your data.

What "appropriate authorities"? Shouting into the void at some google user forum?

Hacker News.

I'm only half kidding. I once had an issue with a Google product that they only fixed after ranting about it here.

Sadly this isn't against the rules. Probably because the users still can go to the app-store and give you a bad review, haha

I believe recent iOS SDKs have implemented a system-controlled UI to ask for reviews to prevent apps doing this. I assume it's enforced via app-store review.

Yes, and you only call the system-controlled function if you're sure you'd get a good review.

They should prohibit that function call completely and ask users randomly for reviews, maybe when they pause or close the app...

I'm more sympathetic to this behavior and developers in general than I used to be.

Just seen too many quality apps get relegated to obscurity because of a few 1-star early reviews from people expecting perfection from a free or cheap app. Or needing functionality that just isn't part of the app. I don't have any apps in the store, so this really isn't personal for me.

What I don't understand is why more devs don't use the API for the in-app overlay review versus a weblink that forwards to the app store. Clearly they're tracking the behavior, but not sure what is tracked via that means that can't be done in-app.