The nuance here was there a fair number of bad players in this space and abuse was not uncommon. Ie, "ratings" apps that were not really ratings / user reviews were bogus / paid for etc.
Apple has a fair bit of visability into app store reviews (ie, did users actually install apps). That said, STILL lots of fakes on app store itself in terms of reviews, so in the end I think your app was actually the BETTER solution (curated lists meant you didn't have the app review spam problem, some ethics means you hopefully didn't push the adware type apps).
So yeah, apple screwed up. I do wish you could filter app reviews by verified in-country users (ie, apple uses the gps of the device and icloud account length / other verifications) to weed out the crappy reviews. If you look you can see where people "buy" their reviews (lumps of all 5 star reviews with min content length).
The nuance here was there a fair number of bad players in this space and abuse was not uncommon. Ie, "ratings" apps that were not really ratings / user reviews were bogus / paid for etc.
Apple has a fair bit of visability into app store reviews (ie, did users actually install apps). That said, STILL lots of fakes on app store itself in terms of reviews, so in the end I think your app was actually the BETTER solution (curated lists meant you didn't have the app review spam problem, some ethics means you hopefully didn't push the adware type apps).
So yeah, apple screwed up. I do wish you could filter app reviews by verified in-country users (ie, apple uses the gps of the device and icloud account length / other verifications) to weed out the crappy reviews. If you look you can see where people "buy" their reviews (lumps of all 5 star reviews with min content length).