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Ask HN: Google Play allows to call female founders “useless woman”

9 points by black_cat ↗ HN
Hi everyone! Last week I’ve got the personal hater, who wrote me couple messages via social network from the fake account and started to blame me. I tried to answer politely, but he(she) can’t calm and promised to write about me bad reviews everywhere. Next step was 1-star review on Google Play. OK, maybe he(she) doesn’t like my app, but review started with the statement, that I’m “useless woman”. Other review statements were about our conversation in another social network but not in my app. I connected Play Market support via Developer Console, but they refused to delete it. Is that normal nowadays to allow personal humiliation of dignity in reviews of the app? What else can I do to protect myself?

7 comments

[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 26.1 ms ] thread
Mononokay
Have you tried flagging the review as inappropriate? It's highly unlikely that Google would refuse to delete a review that was against their rules,* although it could have been because you ignored the protocol they have in place for getting rid of inappropriate reviews: flagging them, which would mean that the support representatives you were talking to might not have the ability to delete the review.

*Found Here: https://support.google.com/contributionpolicy/answer/7400114

black_cat
yes, but only via Developer Console. Should I ask all mark it as inappropriate in Play Market? Sometimes Play Market upvoted some review, which have only dislikes and put them above positive comments. I fear to make things worse
Mononokay
That's the intended purpose, yeah. Anything not related to the product should be flagged, and if what you're describing is accurate, these aren't related to the product. Google should remove them a week or so after being flagged.
black_cat
Even if my request in Developer Console now with the status "rejected"? I can't send such request again in Developer Console. Tried to write them on email, but that's general support, not the review team. Even if they by default believe in anything written (terrible app, terrible support, everything is bad), why offend founder is OK? Still can't believe
grizzles
I had something like this happen to me a few years back. It was unexpected and pretty eye opening to realize that there are people out there who feel the need to take out their rage out on indie entrepreneurs.

You might want to post responses like "Sorry to hear you didn't enjoy it!" to try to mitigate the damage of their review but the overall best advice would be to just ignore the person. Hopefully they will eventually fade away.

black_cat
There are people out there = in Review Team or personal haters in the world?

If I switch developer account from personal to corporate, will things get better or worse (the firm may pay more to keep good rating)?

I've answered about who and why wrote such things, but now Play Market hid it! Other people can't see my answer. I can't understand why I can't defence my personal name? Why every potential user should read bad words about me?

black_cat
I connected Developer Support several times and suddenly it have helped. I wish good luck and to be brave for everybody with the same situation!