Robinhood, a stock trading and investment app, received up to 100,000 one-star reviews after its move to block purchases of GameStop stock, Verge reports.
In recent weeks, the price of GameStop stock has seen a phenomenal increase after it was made popular by Reddit users in the r/WallStreetBets subreddit.
As a result, Robinhood ended up losing out, and so in a bid to rectify the situation, it blocked users from trading GameStop stock.
Robinhood released the following statement yesterday (January 28)
"Our mission at Robinhood is to democratize finance for all. We’re proud to have created a platform that has helped everyday people, from all backgrounds, shape their financial futures and invest for the long term."
The statement continued:
"We continuously monitor the markets and make changes where necessary.
"In light of recent volatility, we are restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only, including $AAL, $AMC, $BB, $BBBY, $CTRM, $EXPR, $GME, $KOSS, $NAKD, $NOK, $SNDL, $TR, and $TRVG.
"We also raised margin requirements for certain securities."
Not taking too kindly to the decision, a number of Robinhood users have since started online campaigns, banding together to give the trading app one-star reviews on Google's Play Store and Apple's App Store, as reported by Verge.
The campaign was successful for a while and disgruntled users collectively managed to bring the app down to a one-star rating on Google Play Store.
Some have even taken to Twitter to share their thoughts, with one user writing: "after delisting GameStop and AMC, Robinhood has gotten over 100,000 1 star reviews in one hour on the app store, now set with a 1 rating. they deserve it."
However, in order to crack down on misuse of the rating system, Google has deleted nearly 100,000 one-star reviews. In fact, the trading app has now reverted back to nearly four stars.
According to Google policy, reviews that violate the rating system, are strictly prohibited. It has a system that “combines human intelligence with machine learning to detect and enforce policy violations in ratings and reviews.”
Google told Verge that it removed the reviews that violated its rating policies. Companies are not able to delete reviews themselves.
