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"Idiot" is needlessly offensive and the GP's tone isn't great, but all of those reasons are usually invalid reviews (unless the app markets to that demographic). If I'm reading reviews for an app seeing your review about misreading the description because english isn't your first language is unhelpful spam (assuming the app is english-only).

Unfortunately, these type of reviews where people post completely irrelevant complaints are quite common (see the number of people reviewing their local post office in Amazon reviews), but I do wish platforms would remove them.




I have the same issue with reviews like that. If an app isn't meant for you, uninstall it, get a refund, and move on. A review that basically says "I didn't have product X so this app that controls product X is garbage" are completely useless (except if the app says nowhere in the title or or description that it has additional requirements to function).

They don't bother me as much as the Amazon ones you bring up though. I swear the majority of negative reviews I see on there are people complaining that the product never shipped or that the shipping service damaged it. There's so many of them that on Amazon that it can be nearly impossible to find reviews that actually say negatives about the product. Tends to end up being better to find a trusted professional reviewer and if they haven't reviewed what you're looking at, just skip it in favor of something they have reviewed.


I'd say a lot of those are perfectly valid reasons to give a bad review, as those are all actual human beings with mobile phones who may find and buy an app on the app store.

It reminds me of when I did tech support in college. Everybody who walked in or called was a real person trying to get real things done. If they knew as much about computers as me, they wouldn't have been walking in. So I learned to accept them as they were and do my best to help them. I didn't get to choose who walked in.

I think it's the same deal with putting an app in an app store. Well over 80% of America has a smartphone at this point. If a dev really wants to restrict their market to some narrow demographic, it's on them to do the work of countering the context, which sets the entry criteria somewhere around "has at least one eye and one finger". That means very clear marketing, design, and interface choices to make it clear to people they're in the wrong place before they've invested enough time that they feel writing a review is merited.




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