Best Company Stands Its Ground Against Consumer Review Censorship

The drama surrounding GameStop, RobinHood, and Wall Street continues to unfold, with Google the latest to join the fray. 

Upset retail investors recently inundated Google with one-star reviews of RobinHood’s app in response to the company blocking trades of GameStop shares. Due to the influx of negative reviews, the RobinHood app sunk to a one-star average rating. Google chose to delete tens of thousands of these negative reviews, saying they violated its company policies. 

As a consumer review site, Best Company is increasingly concerned about the behavior of review aggregators, such as Google and its recent role in censoring consumer reviews regarding RobinHood.

Best Company reaffirms its commitment to empowering the voice of the consumer and never deleting reviews based on their sentiment. Every review submitted to Best Company is moderated for accuracy, and upon approval, valid reviews are never removed. 

Ethical review moderation and publication standards are critical to ensuring that consumers can truly trust the reviews they read online. Deleting valid reviews solely because they reflect negatively upon a corporation is not only a disservice to consumers, but to the corporation as well. Negative reviews are an opportunity for companies to understand how they are falling short in the eyes of their consumers and how they can improve.

As the figurative epicenter of online reputation, Google has a responsibility to set an example in the way it moderates and publishes consumer reviews. This recent case of Google removing negative reviews for RobinHood certainly demonstrates that it is currently failing in that responsibility.

Best Company CEO Landon Taylor confirms, “As review manipulation and censorship has taken the spotlight on the national stage, we will continue to champion the voice of the consumer. We remain committed to our ethical review publication policies, and believe that this commitment will help make Best Company the most trusted review site. Period.”