Podcasts are becoming Attacked With Negative Reviews With No Help in view Matt Southern

Podcasts are becoming Attacked With Negative Reviews With No Help in view Matt Southern

Angry fans are review-bombing podcasts with one-star reviews, and podcasters have nowhere to show for help.

A story of how one true crime podcast recently saw their star rating plummet was profiled within the Verge in the week .

The podcast was blasted with negative reviews after the host’s criticism of another true crime podcast was featured during a major newspaper.

The story speaks to a bigger issue within the podcast space, which is that the lack of any protection in situ to combat malicious reviews.

In other industries where star ratings wield substantial influence, there are failsafes in situ to thwart off coordinated attacks.

For example, if platforms like Facebook and Yelp detect a business is being unfairly targeted with negative reviews they’ll temporarily suspend the power to go away reviews.

Let’s say an area business was featured within the news for something people didn’t accept as true with . People may attempt to damage the business’s reputation by inundating it with negative reviews.

Here’s an example of what you’d see in Facebook and Yelp when this sort of thing occurs:

In a case like this, people are leaving their opinion of the news article and not their opinion of the customer experience.

That’s precisely the problem happening in podcasting immediately . Established, successful podcasts are seeing their review scores drop overnight and there’s nowhere to show for help.

Coordinated attacks like these don’t just hurt listenership, in some cases they hurt morale to the purpose that host gives up entirely.

A one-star rating campaign against a podcast hosted by two journalists caused them to quit after realizing there was nothing they might do about it.

Taylor Lorenz, one among the podcast hosts, explains:

“There’s no recourse with something like this. There’s nothing we could do, so we just quit doing the podcast shortly after. It’s definitely once I emotionally just gave abreast of podcasting.”

Attempts to succeed in bent report the harassment to Apple support haven't resulted in any quite action.

If you ought to ever end up during a situation where the podcast you’ve worked hard on is being attacked with negative reviews – keep this next part in mind.

Advertisers Don’t Care About Negative Reviews

Review-bombing may still hurt podcaster morale until there are greater protections in situ , but apparently it won’t hurt revenue.

The Verge’s story contains comments from an executive at a serious podcasting agency who says advertisers care about downloads, not reviews.

A consistent, loyal audience means quite review stars when it involves where advertisers plan to spend money.

A coordinated attack of one-star reviews is unlikely to impact a company’s decision to advertise with a selected podcast.

However, there should still be measures in situ to debar malicious reviews. a coffee rating may prevent new listeners from subscribing to a podcast, which may then impact the power to draw in larger advertisers within the future.

That’s why there should be stronger measures in situ , but until they're , try to not let malicious reviews damage morale an excessive amount of if you happen to receive them.