Play Store is developing a new app review policy to ensure genuine ratings and reviews of apps.
As per the reports, the latest change will hold up user-submitted reviews and ratings by around 24 hours before they go public, assuming they’re from real people.
A new policy is aimed at detecting suspicious ratings and reviews on Android apps, according to the report.
New Policies for Ratings/Reviews
Google was quoted as saying in an advisory “To allow us to automatically detect suspicious Ratings or Reviews activity, we are introducing a delay of around 24 hours from when users submit Ratings or Reviews to when those submissions are published,” Google was quoted as saying in an advisory. It also added that by seeing Reviews and replying to them, users could be helped, however, these won’t be immediately public.
It is hoped that this new policy will reduce the spread of fake online product reviews.
As reported, the tech giant warned against posting the same review multiple times, as well as reviewing the same content from multiple accounts.
CMA’s Investigation Into Google & Amazon
An investigation into Google and Amazon was started last year by UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in order to determine whether they “may not have done enough” to combat fake reviews on their respective platforms.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is a non-ministerial government department in the United Kingdom which is responsible for strengthening business competition and preventing and reducing anti-competitive activities.
On 15 March 2012 the UK Government’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) announced proposals for strengthening competition in the UK by merging the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission to create a new single Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). The formation of the CMA was enacted in Part 3 of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013, which received royal assent on 25 April 2013.