An attempt by TikTok users to troll President Trump’s official campaign app with thousands of 1-star views seems to have had an impact – if not the impact the pranksters wanted. In July, Bloomberg reported that TikTok activists flocked to the official Trump 2020 app in the U.S. App Store to fill it with negative reviews. The purpose of the prank was to remove the app from the App Store by lowering its star rating. However, the plan went awry because it is a common misconception that an app will be pulled from the App Store for bad reviews. But the trolling has now led the Trump campaign to reset the app’s rating with the rarely used “reset rating” feature that Apple offers app developers.
The prank against the app had begun in retaliation for the Trump administration’s threat to ban TikTok from the US market. Bloomberg reported that a TikTok user, Juan Booker, posted a video to his 750,000 followers asking them to let 1-star ratings go on the Trump app to boot it from the App Store. That post, and then many others like it, started circulating on TikTok.
But the TikTok users were wrong. The idea that you can download an app to remove it from the App Store has become a popular urban myth. Apple confirmed to TechCrunch that this is not how the App Store works, in fact. It said no 1-star app will be pulled down because of its rating.
However, this does not seem to limit the children. In China, Wuhan schoolchildren have accessed a remote learning app in the App Store by leaving bad reviews, hoping to avoid virtual school during coronavirus lockon. American schoolchildren visited the same thing more recently with Google Classroom, also thanks to a TikTok meme.
In the case of the Trump app, the pranksters had reviews say the app was glitchy and buggy when their personal information was stolen. They sometimes even yelled at TikTok in their reviews.
Image Credit: Data via Sensor Tower
At the time of the Bloomberg report, the Trump campaign said that the TikTok users’ vibration attempt had no impact on the Trump app. “TikTok users have no influence on everything we do. What we do know is that the Chinese use TikTok to spy on their users,” Trump campaign director Tim Murtaugh told the news outlet.
In fact, the extent of the trolling downgraded the Trump app to the point where the Trump campaign made the decision to erase its review history and start anew.
Just before the Bloomberg news release was published, data from the app store intelligence company Sensor Tower showed that the number of ratings for the app jumped sharply from July 7 to July 9, 2020.
The app had around 20,500 1-star ratings on July 7, which spiked to 216,500 1-star ratings on July 9th. The timing of that seems to coincide with Pompeo’s initial comments about potentially blocking TikTok.
The bad reviews of the Trump app peaked in the week of July 13 when it received 5,383 1-star reviews compared to 896 5-star reviews. The app saw its lowest star rating on July 11, at 1.2 stars.
It appears that the trolling picked up again in August, as news of Trump’s executive order banning TikTok made headlines. On August 10 and 11, the app received 490 1-star views against 59, for example 5-star views.
The company says the Trump app has never before gleaned its rating history. But it did so on August 14, 2020 in the US App Store when it updated to its latest version.
The day before the ratings were restored, the app was rated around 1.5 stars.
The reset of reviews does not seem to stop the trolling. But as a result of the reset, trolling no longer has such a significant impact now that all older negative reviews are not included in the app’s summary.
On August 15 and 16, the app received 172 1-star views and 130 5-star views. Then, on August 17 and 18, it received 161 1-star reviews and 162 5-star reviews.
As of the time of writing, the app has downgraded itself to a rating of 3.9, over 3,330+ reviews.
Typically, app publishers do not want to restore their app’s summary rating because it means they have to delete their app’s lifetime rating history and start over. This means that even the previous good reviews of the app can no longer contribute to the summary rating that the app displays in the App Store. The move is considered something of a last resort. It’s what a developer would use if, for example, it had released a buggy update and got slammed with 1-star reviews for having a broken app and wanted a second chance with users after the bug was repaired.
Even Apple warns against using the feature unnecessarily. On the Apple Developer website, Apple explains how to reset an app’s summary and when to use it.
“… We recommend that you use this feature sparingly,” Apple writes. While restoring the summary review, you can make sure that it reflects the most up-to-date version of your app – handy when an update addresses users’ previous concerns – with a few ratings, potential users can download the functionality of your app “Summary review does not reverse the written reviews of your app. Previous reviews will continue to appear on your product page,” says Apple website.
Of course, the Trump campaign is not likely to work. The official app will not have enough ratings to grant legitimacy. It has no other apps that even pretend to be the “real” version – a problem that some other App Store publishers encounter. App publishers who are typically concerned with maintaining their review history are those who aim to give potential users a guarantee that their app has been around for a long time and that it has a large user base, based on the number of reviews.
When the rating is returned, the rating starts at zero. This can sometimes be seen as a popularity metric, however, so Trump’s campaign probably did not pull the kill switch without some consideration.
This is not the first time TikTok users have tried to prank the Trump campaign. Thousands of TikTok users, along with K-pop fans, signed up for tickets to Trump’s Tulsa rally in an attempt to remove seats from Trump supporters. When it emerged that the rally was underway, TikTok users and other online activists demanded credit. The Trump campaign disputes this, saying it already had tens of thousands of fake phone numbers being used for fake registrations.
While the results of these online pranks may not have the effect they are intended for, it is worth noting what TikTok users are able to achieve if their ideas go viral in the very app that Trump is looking for is prohibitive. One wonders, however, if the TikTok pranksters of age will take their activism to the ballot box later this year.
The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
