I think the biggest issue right now is that cheating doesn’t carry any real consequences. Shopify already has a team that reviews partner reports, but everything happens behind closed doors. Making these violations public would show the community that Shopify is actually taking action.
Here is how I think a fair penalty system could work:
Public violation history: Every app page should have a public compliance log. It should list the type of violation (like fake reviews or keyword stuffing), the date, the current status, and a short note from the Shopify team.
Algorithmic penalties: Violations need to hit a developer’s bottom line immediately. If an app breaks the rules, Shopify could deploy automatic restrictions like:
Pushing them far down the search rankings to kill their organic traffic.
Instantly freezing the listing if flagged for review fraud so they cannot accept any new reviews.
Blocking their ability to run paid ads in the App Store.
Penalty expiration: We need to separate accidental rule-breakers from chronic cheaters. If a developer fixes the issue and stays compliant, their search and advertising restrictions should expire after a few months so they can recover. However, the incident should still stay in their public log, marked as “Resolved,” so the history remains transparent.
In-context reporting: Right now, the reporting process is buried in a form that feels built for partners reporting other partners. Shopify should add a simple “Report this App” link directly on the listing page so merchants can also easily flag fraud through a quick popup modal.
This is indeed mind-blowing. The punishment was just to delist them for a few days, and then they were restored with all their reviews intact. This is very, very concerning, and without a good solution, it is hard to consider Shopify a trustworthy and fair platform for apps.
We currently have 3 apps running on the App Store, but without a clear solution to review farming, we most likely will not continue expanding our offerings on the Shopify App Store.
@Dmitri_Pavlutin - That’s honestly unbelievable. I noticed he mentioned the apps had been delisted, but they’re already back on the App Store. If that’s the case, the consequence seems to have been virtually non-existent. They retain the reviews, rankings, visibility, installs, and revenue gained through behaviour that was completely in breach of the Partner Agreement, and then carry on as normal.
This wasn’t a minor issue or a one-off mistake either. It appears to have occurred across their entire portfolio of apps and continued for months, with concerns being raised publicly since at least 1 March. If conduct on that scale doesn’t result in any meaningful consequence, it does make you wonder what would.
I don’t have X/Twitter, but if you do, would you mind replying to that tweet with a link to this thread so @malisauskasLT can see it? I’d be very interested to have them join the discussion and hear their perspective here as well.
These are great ideas. I actually put together a post a few days ago compiling a range of suggestions from developers. Would you mind adding your ideas there as well? It would be great to get the discussion active again, as Shopify seems to have largely ignored the thread so far. Here’s the link:
I especially like your idea around making reporting easier. We should be able to quickly report Partners, and even specific reviews, directly from the App Store rather than having to go through the current form every time.
Like many honest developers, I’m pretty fatigued by repeatedly filling out detailed reports and then receiving little or no feedback. As a result, there are plenty of things I don’t even bother reporting anymore. The process is unnecessarily difficult as well. You can’t easily attach screenshots or supporting evidence, and the burden is on the reporter to write everything out from scratch every single time.
To make matters worse, there’s no way to see what you’ve already reported, track the status of reports, or understand what action, if any, has been taken. The whole process feels quite opaque and discourages people from reporting issues in the first place.
I don’t have X/Twitter, but if you do, would you mind replying to that tweet with a link to this thread so @malisauskasLT can see it? I’d be very interested to have them join the discussion and hear their perspective here as well.
With Shopify firing their staff and replacing them with AI, I dont see how we’d see this kind of problem getting resolved..
I see it this way:
Create an alert when the number of reviews started increasing way more than usual
When an anomaly is detected, an AI can install the app automatically (from a non-dev store) and read what is being displayed on the dashboard - in case of violations it alerts a human to check;
Punish more severely the apps which practice the reviews farming.
@Dmitri_Pavlutin you’d need human reviewer to validate before punishing an app in order to avoid false positives. It would be disastrous if a fully automated process was punishing the wrong apps.
To do that they need more workforce, which is seemingly not what shopify is doing at the moment.
You can see it, they’re already under pressure with app reviews submissions going wild.
@Dmitri_Pavlutin you’d need human reviewer to validate before punishing an app in order to avoid false positives. It would be disastrous if a fully automated process was punishing the wrong apps.
To do that they need more workforce, which is seemingly not what shopify is doing at the moment.
@Soufiane_Ghzal The AI only detects and alerts when it thinks the app violates the terms. On AI detection a human checks everything and makes the final decision.
It’s clear that this problem is getting bigger and bigger. It’s also clear that there’s currently no working system to punish bad actors. I’ve been sharing it on my X and everyone’s saying the same - reporting partner violation doesn’t work. You take your time to document everything, report it, and nothing happens.
Shopify is completely silent about this at the moment and it’s worrying. I’m thinking of starting a closed community of legit Shopify Developers where we would all gather and document evidence about policy violating partners. Will share more about it on my X.
The crux of the issue is that it’s far too easy to create stores. There needs to be more friction in the onboarding process and stronger identity checks.
As far as I’m aware, Shopify doesn’t even require email addresses to be confirmed before a store can start operating, which makes it incredibly easy for bad actors to use burner emails and disposable identities.
I wonder if Shopify has even done anything for this specific partner, who is clearly a bad actor. The app dev may have seen the tweet and quickly made some changes in hopes that a formal Shopify audit wouldn’t notice their blatant violations.
I also suspect there are cases where these in-app review CTAs have conditional logic so that they are only targeted towards specific plan types that are not used internally by Shopify during audit
We’ve have had reports of apps using store/plan-specific logic. Earlier in this thread, Muhammad mentioned:
I also came across an app the other day that had a “Leave a review to get free access” message visible in one of its App Store screenshots. I’m guessing they accidentally uploaded the wrong screenshot! I reported it at the time, but because we have no way to view or track our previous reports, I can’t even remember which app it was now. The whole thing is a mess…
BTW, this week we received more emails from fake reviewers than actual support requests for our app.
Also saying just so Shopify staff realizes how far it could get if they do nothing, but I wouldn’t be surprised if at some points developers frustrated of non-action from Shopify will decide to punish the cheaters by themselves and hire fake reviewers to leave 0 stars reviews to cheaters (the only winner would be the fake reviewers themselves, everyone else would be a loser: devs, merchants, shopify).
I of course hope that Shopify is going to act before it escalates to that point.
@Paige-Shopify I wonder what Shopify would do if that ever happened?
Could we also get some feedback on this thread confirming that action is actually being taken? As you can see, many honest developers are becoming increasingly frustrated by the apparent lack of visible progress.
The lack of communication from Shopify leadership on this issue is deafening and the lack of transparency as to what action they may or may not be taking is frustrating. Perhaps a petition sent directly to Mikhail Parakhin, Rukmani Subramanian and Harley himself is what’s needed to move the needle.
(the only winner would be the fake reviewers themselves, everyone else would be a loser: devs, merchants, shopify).