They won't even wait that long. If they can find anyone on the internet telling other people to go give negative reviews to an app, they claim all negative reviews are due to that call to action. That gives them "justification" to delete all of them as "inauthentic".

Why would they need justification?

No idea. Makes the lawyers happy, perhaps?

I am beginning to go insane from YouTube ads, but in this case I'll say those reviews should be considered illegitimate.

It is rather easy to start a negative review campaign, but no one ever participates in a good review campaign. There's no rage in that, that's why.

Inciting people to give 1 star reviews quickly snowballs into even people who never used the app doing it. Where's the fairness in that?

I am watching one of these social meltdowns with a Chinese game that just launched. After successfully bringing it to 2.6 points on Google Play, people are now calling for everyone to stop (because it's not that bad) and remember to change their reviews if devs address the problems.

Now the latter is never happening. People did the hormone let go all over the app on Play store, they're not cleaning that up.

All because of a reduced amount of rewards compared to the Chinese version.

What is the harm if a company that screws its customers over gets punished out of proportion? It incentivizes companies to be better to their customers.

This sort of thing is so sad to hear about, because it’s hard evidence that people won’t stop using a platform even when it’s literally exercising censorship to sway their opinions.

We harp on about Chinese having no freedom of press, yet we let these corporations do these things?

Do we have a free press? ;)

One thing to remember here is that reviews on an App Store are not public speech, they are always subject to censorship rules and always have been, because they are using a private for-profit service under a license agreement. It would be a different thing for the corporations you’re talking about to be able to censor criticism in the newspaper or on other people’s websites, but that’s not what’s happening here.

There’s also a legitimately difficult question here too. It has in fact happened that apps have gotten unfairly review-bombed, in response to public opinion, for third party reasons outside the seller’s control (Nvidia shield?), and also because of businesses playing dirty (look at Amazon and Chinese sellers for many examples of nasty review shenanigans). It is fair, and I would even say necessary, for the hosting company of a marketplace to be able to exercise discretion and editorial powers. It will always depend on the specifics of each case.