Apple has already made the case for sideloading:

✅ “Now of course, one of the reasons we’re all so comfortable installing so many apps from the App Store are iOS’ security model.” ✅ “Apps […] can’t get at your personal information or mess with other apps without your permission.”

💥 The judge has now OVERRULED Apple’s attempt to dismiss my lawsuit over App Store scams & anti-competitive practices – so the case will move forward to discovery.

1/ Here’s what happened:

techcrunch.com/2022/01/31/an-… Last year I filed a lawsuit because Apple kept unfairly rejecting my keyboard app, allowed scam apps to steal my business, and prevented fair competition against their own built-in keyboard.
theverge.com/2021/9/16/2267…

💰 How to make $13,000,000 on the App Store:

(thread) 1. Make a basic app people might be searching for, eg “Volume Booster”:

🚨Apple ignored this person. Now they’re publishing multiple proofs-of-concepts:

“I've reported four 0-day vulnerabilities this year [...], three of them are still present in [iOS 15.0] and one was fixed in 14.7, but Apple decided to cover it up”🤯

habr.com/en/post/579714/ 🚨“Any app installed from the App Store may access the following data without any prompt from the user:”

.@GoodNotesApp vs their scam competitor: Uhm, where is the free trial I was promised? Is anyone minding the App Store?

So now we know. See you in court, @Apple.

https://twitter.com/EuanFTraynor/status/1437844636932870144

And since Apple really loves California as much as I do: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Californi…

🚨Apple’s @AppStore remains a hotbed of multi-million dollar scams🚨

1/ Here’s how:👇 Let’s search for “watch faces” - a popular Apple Watch search term - and start with the top organic result: “Watch Faces Gallery Collection”.

With 4.4 stars, thousands of ratings, and a fake “Editors’ Selection” badge (sigh), it looks like a solid app.

apps.apple.com/us/app/watch-f…

Tell me App Review is broken without telling me App Review is broken: Most recent reviews just speak for themselves:

This @AppStore app pretends to be a silly platformer game for children 4+, but if I set my VPN to Turkey and relaunch it becomes an online casino that doesn’t even use Apple’s IAP.

🤯 The developer uses shady ads to attract unsuspecting users, pretending the app was featured on CNN Turk.

WARNING: Another top-grossing VPN scam is on the @AppStore

Stay clear! 🚨

How to spot this $5M/year scam in 5 minutes flat: 👇 The app’s screenshots are pretty standard, while the description is riddled with typos - and almost feels like it’s *trying* to be a big unreadable wall of text:

How it started / how it’s going.

Since I exposed this scam yesterday, its ratings have dropped dramatically. What happened?

(thread) Apple removed some of the fake reviews, resulting in the drop. Great news, right? Not so fast.

There are 120 reviews for this app right now. Of those, 114 are 1-star reviews. The average review score?

1.1 stars ☠️

ONE POINT ONE.

As a reminder, the absolute floor is 1, not 0

You think the @AppStore is “a place you can trust”?

🚨Think again!🚨

How to spot a $5M/year scam, in 5 minutes flat:👇 This app has 4.1 stars with over 1,000 ratings, and a really nice 5-star featured review:

What Apple doesn’t want you to know about the App Store👇

“The apps you love, from a place you can trust” they tell you. But the reality is far from it.

A 4.5-star app? Might as well be a multi-million dollar scam.

How, you ask?

1/🧵 The average star rating of an app can be *trivially* manipulated by any developer.

Really. Just take a look at this eye-opener of a Quora page:

quora.com/What-are-the-b…

So Apple finally publicly responded to my complaints.

Let's take apart this embarrassingly generic boilerplate statement the gave to The Verge: "investigate and take action on each report"

The most I got out of their official channels when reporting a competitor using "FlickType Keyboard" as the *name* of their subscription IAP?

Competitor changed it to "Type: Flick my keyboard".

Apple considered this "resolved". 🤦

Since Apple seems to be cool with this scam remaining on their App Store, let's look at another app from the *same* developer.

This one has stolen "only" $1M so far...

How?

1/🧵

https://twitter.com/keleftheriou/status/1357938977748078594

Enter "Truth or Dare⋆". No, the little asterisk at the end is not a typo, just a shitty ASO dark pattern.

apps.apple.com/US/app/id13976…

Solving the fake ratings issue would solve all of the various problems @_inside and @johnsundell mention here, other than the *really* good counterfeits.

If the ratings are 4.6 stars but all reviews together are 1.6 stars, you don't need any advanced AI to detect.

https://twitter.com/9to5mac/status/1359543082262425606

Also, a huge discrepancy between star rating and refund volume should raise a huge flag.

This scam has been up for years, and is *still* up after all this exposure.

Is Apple even listening?

https://twitter.com/keleftheriou/status/1357938977748078594?s=20

The App Store has a *massive* fake ratings problem👇

You: an honest developer, working hard for a 4.5 star rating.
Your competitor: a $12M App Store scam, undetected for years.

1/🧵 This app was released early 2016.

With a 4.5 rating from over 150k users, and a price of free, it definitely seems worth downloading:

Scammers often make the "Cancel" button of their purchase prompt a "Where's Waldo" of sorts.

Other times it only appears after a few seconds.

Here, there just isn't a way to skip it at all. You download the app, and it just doesn't work.

Unless you sign up for a $260/year subscription that is, which is what most people will do here.

And here's them pumping their deteriorating rating to 4.4 stars 2 days ago - classic.

The reviews?

1.8 stars

If you ever wondered what scammers can do, my Reddit post exposing them hit the r/Apple frontpage with 100 votes but just got mass-downvoted into oblivion.

And I mean, down to ZERO votes.

The truth won't be hidden for too long, but the scammers surely want to keep it that way. @johnkoetsier

Up to now, I've been in the "Apple *wants* to do the right thing" camp. My viewpoint is starting to change.

How to spot a $5M/year scam on the @AppStore, in 5 minutes flat:👇 4.6 stars, with over 80,000 ratings, and a glowing 5-star "featured" review:

This next ratings scam is of the YOLO variety, from a company called "Followers Unfollowers Tracker".

They casually buy almost up to a *thousand* fake ratings in a single day.

Why even bother doing this slowly, over time? As soon as their average drops below their liking, BAM! And just to keep it consistent, they casually buy ONE HUNDRED positive reviews in a day - a far cry from their average of *zero* per day.