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Google seems to have pushed a massive amount of ai-generated 4 and 5 star reviews to their new "Android Developer Verifier" app (reddthat.com)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by Redjard@reddthat.com to c/android@lemmy.world
68 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

This app is set to stop people from installing apks or using stores and apps not accepted by google ("verification" requires payment of course). The play store listing does not have images, a proper description, and the app cannot be opened.

Screenshots from the play app because google did something custom for this playstore listing which crashes Aurora. It's fixed in the latest fdroid release, but I noticed that too late, so most screenshots are from googles shitty app.

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[–] lechekaflan@lemmy.world 7 points 11 hours ago

Pichai you fucking banchode.

[–] vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 15 hours ago

I'm seeing 4.2 stars now. Absolutely AI generated.

But I'm completely unable to review this myself.

[–] UnrepententProcrastinator@lemmy.ca 6 points 14 hours ago

Ah yes! Abdul Islam!

[–] spacegoat@lemmy.world 30 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Isn’t that fraud

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 8 points 12 hours ago

Laws are for the common peasants.

[–] Raiderkev@lemmy.world 20 points 20 hours ago

Yes, but that's legal now

[–] chunes@lemmy.world 26 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

Trusting reviews on proprietary review software is like trusting a fox with a henhouse.

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 4 points 23 hours ago

Foolish for sure but not as bad as trusting random unsourced claims on Lemmy!

[–] MrSoup@lemmy.zip 122 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Probably these aren't Google's bot, but just regular bots which need "reputation" to not be marked as such. So they leave reviews on Google and other big apps just to have an history of activity.

[–] esc@piefed.social 70 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Or, hear me out, it could be one of the most shady companies in world (google), that has both control over infra and motive to do it.

[–] VibeSurgeon@piefed.social 46 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Why would they need bots to inflate the star rating? They own the whole system, they could just overwrite it with whatever the hell they wanted if they wanted to commit some fraud.

[–] EggInDisguise@lemmy.blahaj.zone 21 points 1 day ago (1 children)

To make it look legitimate and less like they're just using their control over their system.

[–] Wispy2891@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

But at that point their own shittiest llm can generate something that's not an obvious fake review for an unrelated app

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[–] BurgerBaron@quokk.au 8 points 1 day ago

Both things can be true.

[–] cantstopthesignal@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Google doesn't do things directly. They contract other companies to do the dirty bot work like how they pay scrapers for information and pretend they aren't contributing to it. It would not surprise me if they pay other companies to "promote" and maintain plausible deniability as to what exactly that means.

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Google does plenty of things directly. Recaptcha was a Google project to perform OCR, and now image recognition.

[–] Redjard@reddthat.com 3 points 20 hours ago

They distance negative stuff and liabilities. They don't destroy books, they contract out to a company that scans and destroys them and transfers them the data.

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 9 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Yeah, and a lot of the screenshotted comments don't even read like bots, they read like someone in a developing country that doesn't speak english as a primary language.

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[–] Axolotl_cpp@feddit.it 16 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

Just realized i had this bullshit installed even though i disabled playstore updates and my phone has no updates anymore...this is fucking bullshit, also, they seem to have hidden all review as of now
Fucking Gooslop

[–] Redjard@reddthat.com 5 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I found an activity "System Component Update Activity" (com.google.android.finsky.systemcomponentupdateui.common.SystemComponentUpdateActivity) a few years ago.

That seems to have stopped all the random changes gsm made to my phone all the time, and I also haven't gotten this app or the scanner one from last year.
You could install App Manager from fdroid and launch that using adb perms I think.

[–] Axolotl_cpp@feddit.it 3 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

Yup found it, thanks!

Edit: i used acticity launcher, from f-froid too

[–] ClownStatue@piefed.social 53 points 1 day ago (5 children)

“Street forward UI.” Can’t tell if this is a weird typo or AI is trying to make “Streets ahead” A Thing.

[–] UnrepententProcrastinator@lemmy.ca 3 points 14 hours ago

The name is very original too (Abdul Islam)

[–] cantstopthesignal@sh.itjust.works 29 points 1 day ago (1 children)

AI struggles with adjectives, I suspect because it's trained on the internet where people struggle with adjectives and just use an adjective they think sounds intelligent when they really just want it to mean good or bad. Like how everything nowadays is some therapy word that doesn't always fit the context, like this app is performative, it gas lights me. Using forward in particular is common in online spaces that describe food or taste in general. Like a beat forward salad. The pilates class is music forward. I could see how an AI would use it inconsistently because people often use it inconsistantly and sometimes use it wrong.

[–] anarchrist@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Sounds like they're streets behind!

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[–] jlow@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 day ago

It is half of a Bone Apple Tea, though

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[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 28 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Fuck android. I hope I can leave it soon.

Fuck iOS harder, but we're also well into "fuck android" territory.

[–] eleitl@lemmy.zip 16 points 1 day ago

Graphene OS and Lineage OS are okay Android though.

[–] TheNokMachine@pawb.social 7 points 22 hours ago

Of course, just in case anybody get convince of it being remotely useful

[–] Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 5 points 21 hours ago

I don't even know how to add a review. The made it so I came find the button on the play store mobile app...

[–] FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 41 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I don't like the direction Google is taking Android. I'm not in favor of this enforced developer registration.

"Seems to" is not the same as "did." With a couple of LLMs and a bit of time others could've dropped these rave reviews as well. It isn't far fetched that it is Google. But from a PR point of view they'd be stupid if it was them. They gain nothing but bad headlines from a stunt like that. So we probably need a bit more proof than some screenshots.

[–] CameronDev@programming.dev 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

A slightly more rational theory is that one (or a few) of those "pay-per-review" networks is using it as a demo of their services.

"Look what we can do to a deeply unpopular app, for $XXX we can do the same for you"

[–] Redjard@reddthat.com 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is not exactly subtle, so even if that were the case google would have chosen to let the fake reviews remain. They have removed reviews with far less cause and care in the past.
Honestly though I would expect a service that specifically sells fake reviews to do a lot better than this. This looks like a hackjob an intern delivers when you tell them to just quickly do what all those fake review services do.

[–] CameronDev@programming.dev 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Those services are hackjobs. Google is the professional company. If google wanted to do this, they have the resources and ability to do a far better job. That have direct DB access to the play store, they can retroactively spread the reviews out, and even delete/hide the negative reviews.

As for why they aren't removed yet, that could just be that they ban in waves and haven't done so yet.

[–] Redjard@reddthat.com 10 points 1 day ago

Corporations aren't single entities. They also need internal deniability etc.
As a top executive, you don't want your orders all around the company to do something to the database and skip the regular systems. You want to simply create an environment where someone far lower feels the pressure to fake reviews "on their own", and then you don't notice it until public attention or legal proceedings find it. After that you simply kick out the low level people that were involved.

The fake reviews seem to have been going for at least 6 weeks, so that would have to be a very slow cadence for ban waves.

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[–] 20cello@lemmy.world 28 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Big tech workers should resign

[–] Aedis@lemmy.world 30 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

They should unionize and negotiate that they can't get fired over rejecting to do clearly unethical work.

Because right now their options are:

a) Comply with unethical work

b) Reject to do it and get fired and thrown into a job economy where its going to take months if not a year or more to find a job.

[–] protogen420@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 day ago

they can't unionize, the burgeiosie class has done everything to keep unemployment high as in that way they can always just fire everyone and simply rehire new ones, keeping unemployment high reduces the power of workers

[–] 20cello@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

I strongly agree with you but I'm afraid it's too late, they need to leave their workplaces or be considered complicit, at least those who would but "can't" for the reasons you listed above. The others,those who believe in what they're doing or cannot see the damage they're provoking with their work,idk ,fuck them all I guess

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[–] newton@piefed.social 6 points 23 hours ago

So. Everyone knew this, and no one did anything, we all switched to graphene phone here .

[–] AviAdi@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I still think this AI revolution is being shoved down our throats instead of being an organic revolution revolution. The funny thing is I did and do use AI features. I just refuse to download or activate any new bs ai permissions. Because I refuse to do that I have lost functionality in my android Device. Now I can't tell my phone to schedule something on the calendar. That feature used to be native with the phone now it's locked behind the AI app. I still use image search a lot, I bet that will be gone soon.

Anyway, this is Google trying to use their idiotic AI to manipulate us again. Just like taking away features to download the AI app, it's all about control now, not utility, not customer service.

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[–] shininghero@pawb.social 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Weird, play app on mine doesn't show reviews or anything.
Went in via browser to tell them to fuck off.

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[–] im_fine_sandy@nord.pub 8 points 1 day ago

I guess Google could just target specific types of users to review, rather than everyone. I'm sure there's people out there who would love to give a shitty business a great review.

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