App Store glitch causes millions of ratings to disappear from apps like Instagram

A glitch in the App Store seems to have caused a panic for app developers.

Millions of app  ratings and reviews completely vanished from the App Store over the weekend. The Apple Post first noticed the disappearing ratings when developers started reporting that their apps were showing a sudden steep drop in rating and review counts.

As 9to5Mac pointed out, some popular apps, like Instagram, lost millions of ratings, dropping from 8 million to almost zero reviews.

“I think Apple just purged a bunch of App Store ratings,” tweeted app developer Jeff Johnson. “I suddenly went from 82 ratings to 39. My app is only 7 months old total. Not old ratings by any measure. This is a nightmare.”

Other developers also questioned whether Apple was purging fake or spammy reviews or if iPhone maker had deployed a brand new algorithm altogether. 

However, it’s increasingly looking like a bug is responsible for the rating disappearances.

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AppFigures, a company which tracks App Store analytics, tracked the review data and found that thousands of apps were affected over the weekend and as high as 50 percent of ratings had vanished. On Monday, it had also discovered that while some apps, like Instagram, were recovering and gaining back the lost ratings, other apps, like YouTube, just started to lose its reviews after escaping the weekend unscathed.

Mashable has reached out to Apple for comment and will update as soon as we hear back.

UPDATE: Dec. 18, 2018, 11:59 a.m. EST: Apple confirmed the issue has been resolved.

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