The continuing buying and selling freeze associated to Robinhood and shares resembling GameStop and AMC continues to increase to Apple’s App Retailer right now. As we reported earlier this morning, Robinhood made the controversial determination to ban trades of GME, KOSS, and different Reddit-backed shares.
Now, affected Robinhood customers are calling on Apple to take away Robinhood from the App Retailer — and accusing the corporate of censoring unfavourable Robinhood critiques on the App Retailer.
The story on Robinhood and GME
Over the previous month (and lengthy earlier than, in some cases), customers on the WallStreetBets subreddit have been piling onto shares which are commonly-shorted by hedge funds, resembling GameStop, BlackBerry, and AMC. As that volatility continued, Robinhood took the uncommon step of blocking customers from shopping for these shares.
The corporate tried to justify the transfer in a weblog put up, however with out success.
We repeatedly monitor the markets and make adjustments the place mandatory. In gentle of current volatility, we’re proscribing transactions for sure securities to place closing solely, together with $AAL, $AMC, $BB, $BBBY, $CTRM, $EXPR, $GME, $KOSS, $NAKD, $NOK, $SNDL, $TR, and $TRVG. We additionally raised margin necessities for sure securities.
We’re dedicated to serving to our prospects navigate this uncertainty. We essentially imagine that everybody ought to have entry to monetary markets. We’re humbled to have helped many individuals spend money on the markets for the primary time. And we’re decided to offer new and skilled traders with the instruments and sources to assist them make investments responsibly for his or her long-term monetary futures.
Robinhood has now partially backtracked its determination, saying it is going to permit “restricted buys” of those securities beginning tomorrow:
Beginning tomorrow, we plan to permit restricted buys of those securities. We’ll proceed to observe the state of affairs and will make changes as wanted.
Robinhood’s determination, which has additionally been backed by different buying and selling platforms resembling E-Commerce, has confronted ire from politicians starting from Senator Ted Cruz to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The injury is already finished, regardless of Robinhood’s try and stroll again the adjustments.
Robinhood is reportedly going so far as robotically exiting positions of customers holding shares resembling GME. Robinhood can also be already dealing with lawsuits over its motion towards GameStop and other stocks.
Robinhood customers ask Apple for assist
Robinhood customers are equally as upset with the corporate, and they’re calling on Apple to take away the app from the App Retailer. A new petition on Change.org has practically 20,000 signatures and rising, and it says that Robinhood’s makes an attempt to “manipulate the market” are clear violations of Apple’s tips.
The petition cites a line from the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions that claims customers agree to not “plan or have interaction in any unlawful, fraudulent, or manipulative exercise.” The App Store guidelines additionally say:
Apps ought to by no means prey on customers or try and rip-off prospects, trick them into making undesirable purchases, pressure them to share pointless knowledge, elevate costs in a difficult method, cost for options or content material that aren’t delivered, or have interaction in some other manipulative practices inside or outdoors of the app.
One other attention-grabbing tidbit is that Robinhood customers are taking to Twitter to claim that Apple is censoring unfavourable critiques of Robinhood on the App Retailer.
As our colleagues at 9to5Google reported this morning, Robinhood’s Android app has been bombarded with unfavourable critiques because it made the choice to dam buying and selling of GME. The app has acquired over 100,000 unfavourable critiques, bringing the app’s Play Retailer ranking to simply 1-star, down from over 4 stars beforehand.
In the meantime on the App Retailer, Robinhood nonetheless has a 4.8-star ranking with minimal one-star critiques. This isn’t essentially as a result of Apple is “censoring” unfavourable critiques about Robinhood, although. Typically, there’s a delay between when a person writes a evaluation and when it’s revealed. This might imply the 1-star Robinhood critiques will begin hitting the App Retailer tomorrow.
Nonetheless, Robinhood’s antics round GME and different WallStreetBets shares have despatched the rival buying and selling app Webull to the highest of the App Retailer charts. Presently, Robinhood remains to be ranked primary, adopted by Webull in second, and Reddit in third.
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