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.
Pichai you fucking banchode.
I’m seeing 4.2 stars now. Absolutely AI generated.
But I’m completely unable to review this myself.
Ah yes! Abdul Islam!
Isn’t that fraud
Laws are for the common peasants.
Yes, but that’s legal now
Trusting reviews on proprietary review software is like trusting a fox with a henhouse.
Foolish for sure but not as bad as trusting random unsourced claims on Lemmy!
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 GooslopI 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.Yup found it, thanks!
Edit: i used acticity launcher, from f-froid too
Fuck android. I hope I can leave it soon.
Fuck iOS harder, but we’re also well into “fuck android” territory.
Graphene OS and Lineage OS are okay Android though.
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.
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.
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.
To make it look legitimate and less like they’re just using their control over their system.
But at that point their own shittiest llm can generate something that’s not an obvious fake review for an unrelated app
… They would to that to try to slime their way around regulations and accountability…which is pretty much their expertise
Both things can be true.
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.
Google does plenty of things directly. Recaptcha was a Google project to perform OCR, and now image recognition.
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.
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.
So google went old school and is paying a review farm.
That’s even less likely.
Yeah looks like people doing a Mechanical Turk job.
“Street forward UI.” Can’t tell if this is a weird typo or AI is trying to make “Streets ahead” A Thing.
The name is very original too (Abdul Islam)
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.
Sounds like they’re streets behind!
Maybe they are looking forward to the roadhead.
It is half of a Bone Apple Tea, though
Of course, just in case anybody get convince of it being remotely useful
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…
So. Everyone knew this, and no one did anything, we all switched to graphene phone here .
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.
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”
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.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.
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.
They’d gain no such thing because the media is on their side.
To be clear, you can still bypass this either with ADB commands or waiting 24 hours.
Is it dumb you have to do this? Absolutely.
Do I like Google for doing this? Not at all.
I’m just sick of seeing so many people saying it’s completely stops you from side loading apps which is just untrue.
There used to be a time where unlocking xiaomi phones took nothing but waiting 24 hours.
When I got one, that was up to 7 days, and you had to put in a sim with mobile data then make a xiaomi account (so they can log the sim any network details for fingerprinting). Then use a barely working windows only tool to get the codes, and if you requested them too early start over.
Now, last I hear, it’s once per year per sim, with a wait of a month, and many regions (like the us iirc) are completely forbidden.
In this case it’s likely google is checking if the EU will say anything, or other regulators, or regular users. This already adds a big obstacle devs have to get users over.
But they will definitely expand this.Right now you can still install a dummy over it via adb. Just wait for when this is rolled out in new phones and adb can only disable it for a day anymore.
And then wait for them blocking unlocking of phones, and disabling adb without yourself the user verifying with google.Did you ever hear a story about boiling a frog?
Big tech workers should resign
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.
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
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
Then b.1. Some other desperate guy takes their place and complies
