Ratings systems have been gamed to meaninglessness. First stop would probably be removing those.

I realize that creates more discovery problems, but I think that can be ameliorated somewhat by making more use of professional reviewers and app-store integrations with publications like Wirecutter or Consumer Reports.

People rarely go out of their way to put in positive review (or at least neutral reviews, "works as expected"). The current cheats implemented by apps probably affect the ratio of positive reviews per user a lot, making it indicative only of how effective the cheat is, and not the quality of the app.

I wonder if you could get away with only negative reviews? Would a "negative review per total install" metric be worse than "positive reviews per review" (e.g. current ratings)?

True that rating systems have been hacked. Maybe it really boils down to only following reviews from people you trust, which could be selected professional reviewers.

Interestingly, I'm pretty sure apps that drive traffic to other apps are generally not permitted on the app store, per some huge HN thread recently featuring a letter to Tim Cook from the developer of such an app who got removed.

I feel like the internet-pro's work around to validating quality of anything, strangely, is to find a reddit thread where people seem to discuss it meaningfully and logically.

Subreddit trick is super useful. Also for avoiding disinformation, which is a problem in any topic that applies to the general population, because these are thoroughly SEO-saturated by content marketing scoundrels. So usually one of the first things I do is search "<topic of interest> site:reddit.com", look for dedicated subreddits, and browse the top posts and the subreddit wiki. More often than not, there's a lot of solid community knowledge collected there.

Circling back to the topic of apps and ratings, I pretty much never use the app store for product discovery. If I install an app, it's because I knew about it from elsewhere. May be a professional reviewer, may be a friend, or may be a random poster on HN. Basically, it must be a human who I can be confident isn't trying to deceive me.

I think apps could look to how music spreads for inspiration here. There is not a huge importance on "ratings" in music consumption, and some people spend a lot of time listening to playlists or DJ sets by curators. Plus you have apps like Shazam that can identify songs mid-air and mid-play. Translate this to apps?

Or, imagine an App Store, but without search, categories, or any kind of discoverability at all. Let the community handle the discoverability aspect.

I think a lot of music consumption is driven by marketing, though? Like radio stations playing the same song over and over again.

You're never going to get rid of pay-for-play. But you can decentralize the audience base enough so that the impact of p4p is minimized and local.

Plus, I look around me and wonder, "Who actually listens to the radio nowadays?" There are so many other ways to hear new music now.

You could argue that streamers, DJs, and other content creators are just as susceptible to p4p as a radio station, but again there are so many more of them, and regardless of who the curator is, no-one owns anything close to a majority of the total listener base.

>> Plus, I look around me and wonder, "Who actually listens to the radio nowadays?"

Guessing you don’t drive/commute? Tons of commuters here in Canada still listen to the radio every morning on the way to work.

It’s almost an ancient ritual that; for the most part, hasn’t changed up here in Canada, and for those who do use streaming services or whatever it’s usually a combination of both.

There is something comforting about listening to the morning DJ talk bullshit in the morning, traffic directions that are up to date and don’t require you to look at a screen in your car, and often a fine enough selection of music for those whose tastes aren’t too refined. Which is a surprising amount of people.

There are sometimes even ‘water cooler’ stories about anecdotes from Roz + Mocha (our most popular morning radio DJ hosts) - it’s a thing - the place the radio lost the most of ground is honestly at-home and/or portable use, which was never as huge as its use in automobiles anyway. :)

Radio play is also still a holy grail for musical artists like myself, and I’ve put a solid amount of effort into trying to get each single on the air. It’s slightly easier to do up here in Canada due to local laws regarding a % of Canadian content that must be on air. :)

Allow apps to disable/remove ratings completely, and prioritize apps with ratings disabled above those with ratings enabled.

In-platform ratings and the constant nagging would disappear overnight.

At least in the current system, if I saw an app with "ratings disabled" I would assume the ratings are terrible and the developer doesn't want me to see that.

If in a future system I could see that the app had disabled ratings from its initial release, I would assume the developer anticipated the ratings to be mediocre to poor.

I install apps that have no ratings, from a package manager without any centralized rating system whatsoever, all the time. The basic curation by the distro maintainers is enough for me.

At most I look at wiki or into the docs if the app may do what I want it to do for me, before giving the app a try.

I don't have any pre-judice against apps with no in-app store ratings. If I can find the documentation/source code/review online, and the app seems to do what I need, that's good enough for me.

I also install apps with no ratings in environments where that's the norm.

But on the Apple or Google app stores, it's not the norm, and an application that stands out as "this developer has opted to disable ratings" among lots of 4-star and 5-star apps looks different in context, compared with a package in Debian, RedHat or Homebrew.

If it becomes commonplace for well-regarded developers to opt out of ratings, that's different, then it might start to look favourable.

Personally, I get around this by only using apps off F-Droid. I'm sure not everyone would be happy with that solution, but it works well for me.