Up to now, I've been in the "Apple wants to do the right thing" camp. But my viewpoint is starting to change.<p>Here's how I spotted this $5M/year scam in 5 minutes flat.<p>First, the ratings of this app: 4.6 stars, with over 83,146 ratings, and a glowing 5-star "featured" review.<p>Let's dig in with AppFigures and look at the star breakdown of just the reviews - there's 835 of them:<p>5-stars: 109<p>4-stars: 6<p>3-stars: 9<p>2-stars: 31<p>1-stars: 680<p>Their average stars?<p>1.6<p>ONE. POINT. SIX.<p>In these reviews, people are desperately trying to warn others not to make the same mistake they did:<p>"DO NOT PURCHASE"<p>"PREDATORY COMPANY"<p>"Thieves Stay Away"<p>"Hard to believe these reviews are genuine"<p>"BAIT AND SWITCH"<p>Let's look at their ratings over time: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EthbbYYVIAEWK9I?format=jpg&name=large<p>Blue line is new positive ratings per day. This is a completely unnatural pattern here, when overlaid with their download numbers, inferred by the app rankings: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ethbx8jUYAEtDGB?format=jpg&name=large<p>The featured 5-star review is there because the scammers made sure to also long press on it and mark it as "Helpful", alongside submitting all their fake, bought ratings.<p>This scam has been operating from Indonesia for years, although "operating" is giving it too much credit. The app was last updated in 2019, so they are literally sitting and collecting the stolen money.<p>When you download and open the app, you HAVE to start a $10/week subscription to proceed. UNREAL.<p>Apple is doing nothing. In fact, they're even sending the scammers a cool $400k per month.<p>The scam: https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/star-gazer/id1474038335<p>Their "website": http://textystories.com<p>Another image from their support website reads: "Life is wonderful, let our games be part of it!"<p>This is some utter BS. Honest developers are getting fooled by all sides. I am furious.
In general, this doesn't seem like a great use of the HN self-post feature. If you feel this strongly about it, maybe write a blog post that can be formatted properly?<p>> they're even sending the scammers a cool $400k per month.<p>How can you tell that? Seems hard to believe.<p>> Honest developers are getting fooled by all sides.<p>I don't understand this part at all. It might be the case that a handful of normal users are getting scammed by this. But just what do "honest developers" have to do with this case?
I'm sure Apple wants to do the right thing but they've set themselves up badly from the top down in this case: Tim Cook has been promising (and delivering) services revenue and subscriber count growth since 2016. If your employer says services revenue growth is the most important thing, people do respond to incentives even if they're aware of it or not.<p>I'm also sure they're aware of this and hopefully we'll see improvements soon. (no insider knowledge, just good old hopeful thinking)
I don't want to inject needless cynicism, but why did you think that Apple was doing "the right thing" before and what exactly did that entail according to you? It just seems like strange to attribute those goals to a company specializing in Veblen goods.
A part of me hopes that someone here gets inspired by this and does it, until Apple is forced to take action. There's a lot of dodgy behavior on the App Store anyway, but much of it is willing buyer, willing seller.
Apple has become increasingly anti-consumer since Steve Jobs died. It turns out that once you’re the 800lb-gorilla, you no longer have to care about your customers.