The Apple Podcasts app's review score went from 1.8 to 4.6 stars after Apple began prompting users for ratings, confusing some into rating individual podcasts
Apple Podcasts has a long, awkward history with ratings: a 2019 Wall Street Journal analysis found the app ranked #1 in US App Store searches despite carrying a 1.7-star rating before its reviews were removed, and coordinated review-bombing campaigns have since hit individual shows with thousands of one-star reviews that hosts had no recourse against.
The new development flips the direction of manipulation: rather than reviews being stripped or weaponized against shows, Apple began prompting users to rate the app itself, and the score climbed from 1.8 to 4.6 stars — with some users apparently confused into rating individual podcasts instead.
First-order effects
Apple's own Podcasts app now presents a 4.6-star storefront face instead of a 1.8-star one, softening the self-preferencing criticism raised when the app ranked #1 in search results on a sub-2-star score.
Some prompted users are depositing their app ratings onto individual podcasts, meaning shows are receiving star reviews they never asked for and cannot attribute correctly.
Second-order effects
Rival Spotify answered within weeks with a five-star podcast ratings system that only lets users rate a show after listening — a design that directly guards against both drive-by app-style prompting noise and the review-bombing Apple never fixed.
Podcast hosts now face two competing rating regimes: Apple's prompt-driven scores bleeding across apps and shows, versus Spotify's listen-gated per-show ratings, forcing hosts to decide which signal they court.
Third-order effects
If prompting becomes standard practice, app-store ratings stop functioning as an organic quality signal and become a lever the platform operator controls — the same infrastructure that left hosts defenseless against review-bombs now inflates the platform's own score.
The split between gated and ungated ratings points toward per-show reputation systems becoming a competitive feature among podcast platforms, with measurement methodology itself as the differentiator.
The trend: Platform-owned rating systems are shifting from passive user signals to actively managed metrics, with each platform's gating rules defining whose reputation gets measured and how.
How did “Apple Podcasts” suddenly go from 1.8 to 4.6 stars? Is Apple manipulating their own app ratings now? https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
There's a perfect dividing line between Most Favorable reviews being confused people, and Most Critical being about the app. In fact, only 3 of the 5 star reviews in the Australian App Store are for the app itself! https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Oh this is a shocking thread. tl:dr - Apple Podcasts implemented a rating request when you finish a podcast, so people believe they're rating their fave podcast rather than the podcast app. Customer service announcement - there are great podcast apps out there! (I like Overcast).…
This is funny. Podcast connoisseurs downrated the Apple Podcasts app. Apple retaliated by inserting app review prompts in between podcasts. So people thought they were reviewing the podcasts and not the app and bulk voted 5*. Result - Apple Podcasts back to a respectable score ht…
It's true, apples podcast app became unusable. Familiar story, Google reader dominated rss readers but Google never cared about it. Big tech companies are poison to open platforms. https://twitter.com/...
How did Apple Podcasts just manage to ditch its embarrassing 1.8-star rating to reach a 4.7? Apple tells The Verge it rolled out a prompt... and it appears some users think they're actually reviewing the podcasts, not the app! https://www.theverge.com/...
App stores are, for the most part, terrible search engines. They don't get you to what you want, they take you to a bazzar of hagglers, each of whom maintain opaque inventories of potentially dangerous goods. Fun times. https://twitter.com/...
“But with Apple Podcasts, the company is using the same broken star score system that uplifts scammers for its own benefit as well. And it's a crystal clear example of why you can't trust star scores” 🎯 https://twitter.com/...