Google Play Store Removes Millions of Fake Reviews and Bad Apps With New Anti-Spam System

Google is on a Play Store cleaning spree and that end. Its now introduced anti spam system that detects fake reviews and ratings. This system will helps Google clean bad apps, and delete fake reviews and ratings posted through unethical practices. The tech giant uses it is new machine learning anti spam system to assess which review is genuine and which is fake. Google note that the system was able to spot millions of fake review inevitably leading to removal of thousand of bad apps from the Play Store.

Unethical practices like incentive rating often leads to bloated average app ratings as well as. Developer run campaigns where they offer users money or valuable in app purchases in return for good ratings and reviews. This leads to false praise just for that incentive and it is not necessarily the true opinion of the user. Google says that it is system is able to recognize such an event as well and take appropriate action. As mentioned, the system will also recognize review that use profane language are off topic or spread hate. It will also recognize suspicious sudden increase or decrease in average ratings of apps.

Google notes that it does not solely rely on machine learning to take action against developers, apps, ratings, and reviews. Its developers  blog, Google mentions. In 2018 the Google Play Trust & Safety teams deployed a system that combines human intelligence with machine learning to detect and enforce policy violations in rating and review. A team of engineers and analysts closely monitor and study suspicious activities in Play rating and review and improve the model precision and recall on a regular basis. We regularly ask skilled reviewer to check the decisions made by our models for quality assurance.

The search giant urges developers to not buy incentive ratings or fake them in any way. It ask them to not run campaigns that offer in app purchases in return for 5 star rating or a good review. Furthermore, it urges users to not accept app incentives in exchange for review and rating or use profane, hateful or sexual language in reviews. While the tech giant will continue to fish for spam review and apps. The company also requested users and developers to keep a look out and report such review as soon as they spot it. Users can mark the reviews as spam and developers can submit feedback through the Play Console.