I’m currently on a bit of a mission to get Shopify to take fake reviews more seriously in all forms, whether that’s inflated positives, malicious negatives, or outright extortion attempts, all of which at the moment they largely seem to ignore.
Would you be able to let me know how you got on with this, and potentially share a link to your app listing so I can take a closer look at the reviewer? If you’d rather not post it publicly, feel free to send it over via private message.
Someone messaged us on WhatsApp saying that if we don’t pay him $250, he will leave negative reviews on our app. We didn’t respond at first, and then we received a negative review.
After that, we replied to him, and he posted 10 more negative reviews. He told us that if we didn’t transfer $150, he would continue posting more.
We made a mistake and transferred $150. Then he asked for another $100, and at that point we refused to pay. We blocked him, but by then 11 negative reviews had already been posted.
No one is helping us so far. We’ve already contacted Shopify. @Liam-Shopify
I’m still wondering why @ShopifyDevs won’t do anything about this. This is literally every shopify dev’s worst nightmare and we can’t do anything about it.
Every single shopify dev is in danger because of this and the only alternative that we have is report it to the governance team (which in most cases don’t get the bad review removed) or “just getting more positive reviews” (which is not a solution at all).
To be 100% honest this is the main reason why I and many others consider leaving this shopify app development, and I really hope Shopify will do something about this.
I love the Shopify ecosystem, which is why it’s so sad that issues with reviews can so easily undermine the overall experience, and even the viability of being a Shopify app developer. It’s concerning that bad actors can have the power to kill your business anytime.
I really hope someone can hear you out @Boost_Apps and remove all the extortion bad reviews.
This is a pretty insane example of how out of hand fake reviews are getting on the App Store, and how little visibility there seems to be around what’s being done to prevent them.
I found @Boost_Apps’s app listing and it’s pretty clear there are nine extremely similar one-star reviews posted (or at least updated) within roughly a day. The patterns look highly suspicious and, to make matters worse, @Boost_Apps has stated they have proof they’re being extorted.
Fake reviews are undermining the App Store on multiple levels, but this case really highlights gaps in the current systems. Reviews like these should be caught during the holding period, and where coordinated activity is identified, the associated partner accounts should be investigated and removed. If reviews like this can slip through so easily, it raises the question of how many paid five-star reviews are also getting through unnoticed (a ton).
This points to a wider problem than many realise. Fake reviews are illegal in the US, UK, Europe and other regions, and they damage trust across the entire ecosystem.
Honest developers are increasingly frustrated, and it also impacts merchants who rely on reviews to make decisions, only to be misled into installing poor-quality or misrepresented apps.
Would be good to understand what additional safeguards or detection improvements are being worked on, because the situation is clearly escalating.
Hi, I’m sorry to hear you’re dealing with this. Thank you for reaching out through Support, you’ve taken the right steps to address this.
Our Partner Governance team investigated the reviews in question and unpublished multiple one-star reviews that we had high confidence were not genuine.
On fake reviews more broadly, we hear you. We’re working on improvements, but I’m not able to share more details at this time.
Hey @Paige-Shopify, not my thread, or app, or problem really, but thanks for taking the time to look into this.
The fake app issue is clearly widespread at the moment (and has been for a long time), as examples like this show. It would be great to see stronger action taken to address it and remove partners who are taking advantage of the situation. From my side, I’ll keep pushing until something meaningful is done.
Whilst we haven’t had any blackmail, we do have plenty of people message us and ask us to pay for reviews which we ignore.
However we’ve had unhappy merchants in the past who write negative reviews with completely untrue/fake information, when presenting evidence to shopify support to have such reviews taken down, we’re simply told it’s not something they investigate..
There needs to be a more transparent process in how fake reviews are handled and ways for merchants to appeal these decisions.
Hi @Boost_Apps, can you clarify which news you are looking for?
In case you missed it, this was specifically about the reviews on your app:
Our Partner Governance team investigated the reviews in question and unpublished multiple one-star reviews that we had high confidence were not genuine.
Hi Paige, thanks for the update really appreciate it.
However, the issue is still ongoing.
The same person is continuing to post new fake negative reviews and threaten us for more money.
So while some reviews were removed, new ones keep being added.
@Boost_Apps, can you report those new reviews through Report a partner violation - Shopify? It probably feels odd to ‘report’ yourself, but we’re also using this form to capture and investigate reviews of this nature as well.
