TikTok app now has a 4.4-star rating on the Google Play Store.
TikTok received a lot of hatred from people in the past few weeks which resulted in its rating going all the way down to 1.2 stars on the Google Play Store. This happened over multiple reasons including the YouTube vs TikTok fiasco, the spread of coronavirus from China and more. Now, Google has deleted over 7 million negative comments resulting in TikTok’s rating move up to 4.4 stars.
The major chunk of negative comments came in after the short-video app faced a controversy surrounding a video posted by the popular TikToker Faizal Siddiqui. Twitter was soon bashed with hashtags including #IndiansAgainstTikTok. Now, in order to bring TikTok back up, Google removed millions of one-star ratings due to its comment posting guidelines that clearly allows the company to remove negative reviews and ratings that account for a mass attack.
When TikTok reached the 1.2 stars mark in the Google Play Store ratings, it had over 28 million ratings by registered users. Now, when the app is back at 4.4 stars, it has just around 20 million reviews. This clearly shows that the company has deleted over 8 million ratings.
While we have seen a major change in the Google Play Store ratings, TikTok has not seen much difference in ratings on the Apple App Store. The app has maintained a 3.5-star rating on an average in the iOS store. However, with all the controversy coming into play, the ratings were dropped to 3.4 stars.
A quick look at the past
TikTok was targeted by the audience after a series of events. First, a TikTok creator Amir Siddiqui posted a video claiming that TikTok creators can come on YouTube and bring essentially more views than the popular YouTubers. In order to post a reply to this, YouTuber CarryMinati (Ajey Nagar) posted a video titled “YouTube vs TikTok - The End”. The creator was seen roasting a bunch of TikTok users in this video. Shortly after it became one of the most liked videos on YouTube, it was removed by the platform for “violating terms of service”.
This created a buzz in the social media where people were either supporting or opposing the move by CarryMinati. In support, a lot of CarryMinati fans ended up giving rave reviews about TikTok on the Google Play Store resulting in the app reaching 1.2 stars in ratings.
Also, in order to support India and not help the Chinese platform grow further, the users started supporting homegrown apps. TikTok alternative Mitron app saw over 5 million downloads on Google Play Store in just a few weeks after its launch.
