PayPal Honey extension has again "featured" flag in Chrome web store

Here me out on this. A lot of people are in a bubble. Honey got popular because almost ever big influencer out there would market it, and they might still for all I know. People in their infinite wisdom trust these influencers, like those that trust David Pakman saying PIA is the most secure VPN, or the thousands of other influencers shilling for NordVPN. A vast majority of people don't know that there are other VPN providers out there, nor do they really care. What matters if how influencers make them feel about their decision.

Now, if Google suddenly gets a spike in negative reviews, and a lot of them are from Chrome-connected accounts where they can see they've never downloaded that extension, or a lot of them appear to be from users who never used it, then they may have reason to remove or not weight those reviews the same. Just like where an establishment has built up a good reputation, and then something unpopular happens on camera and goes viral & so a bunch of people that have never been there flood the reviews.

What seems most likely to me is that Honey is still a rather popular extension, that what might bother you or the techcentric groups you follow doesn't really matter to a vast majority of users. It may be unfortunate, especially if people are getting misled or Honey is engaged in corruption. If people cared about corruption companies like Comcast/Xfinity would be non-existent IMO. Unfortunately they don't. If people want Google to ban/unfeature Honey, then wouldn't it be better to have a court judgement declaring Honey broke the law, rather than doing it just because it was unpopular to a much smaller group of users than the ones that thought Honey was the greatest cause their favorite influencer told them it was?

The phenomenon you describe is called astroturfing.

No, it is score manipulation.

Astroturfing is a kind of manipulation where you mislead people about attribution, so that they associate what you say/do with a group or person of your choice.

For example, say that you really have an axe to grind with the programming language Rust, and are aware that people have a perception or would find it believable that its community is obnoxious, through being pedantic or overzealous.

What you could then do is join in on conversations and start talking as if you were a member of the Rust community, and act pedantic, overzealous, or otherwise obnoxious. Due to the pretense that you're a Rust user yourself, people would attribute this behavior to the Rust community, meaning you succeeded in boosting this negative perception.

Just an example of course.

> so a bunch of people that have never been there flood the reviews.

quoting a definition:

The implication behind the use of the term is that instead of a "true" or "natural" grassroots effort behind the activity in question, there is a "fake" or "artificial" appearance of support. It is increasingly recognized as a problem in social media, e-commerce, and politics. Astroturfing can influence public opinion by flooding platforms like political blogs, news sites, and review websites with manipulated content. Some groups accused of astroturfing argue that they are legitimately helping citizen activists to make their voices heard.

even uses the same verbiage you did originally.