Google on Thursday removed more than 150,000 negative user reviews from the Robinhood App on the Play Store, following fallout from its manipulative trading halt on skyrocketing stocks, Reclaim the Net reported.
Trying to dampen GameStop’s rise to more than $400 per share, Robinhood on Thursday prevented traders from buying stock in Gamestop.
The company allowed owners to sell GameStop shares, and, in some cases, the app forcefully sold shares without the consent of the owners.
Robinhood’s market manipulation caused 150,000 disgruntled users to flood the Google Play Store with negative, 1-star reviews.
In less than a day, the company’s rating fell from 3.5 stars, with 191,000 reviews, to 1 star, with nearly 338,000 reviews.
Google acted fast to prevent Robinhood—a fellow Big Tech company—from further fallout.
The application monopoly deleted more than 150,000 negative reviews, giving Robinhood’s 1-star rating an inorganic boost to 4 stars—higher than before the controversy began.
Google has not ended Robinhood’s trouble, however, as the targeted buying ban prompted a class-action lawsuit, Reclaim the Net reported.
The Federal Trade Commission also has pledged to look closely at the actions.
But other tech companies also stood by it.
Both Facebook and Discord, another communication app, tried to slow the rise in GameStop’s price by banning WallStreetBets, an investing group that aided a reddit subgroup by the same name.
The latest coordinated actions of powerful companies and institutions further underscores their power to control the nation—whether that power consists of suspending ballot-counting in key swing states on election night, censoring and banning unfavorable social media posts and people, or halting trading on certain stocks from which private investors could gain and Wall Street banks could lose.
