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Because angry fans – or a targeted campaign of sabotage – can derail your reviews and cause you even more heartache.
The Verge has a story called “Angry Fans Keep Wrecking Podcasts With One-Star Reviews.” Writer Ashley Carman interviewed true crime host Justin Drown who’s show Obscura was consistently getting positive reviews, mostly five-star marks on the Apple charts. Then, out of nowhere, just last month, he was getting bombarded with hundreds of one-star reviews and his rating dropped.
Drown told Carman he believes the reviews may be a result of fans of the true crime podcast hosted by Mike Boudet (Sword and Scale). Drown criticized Boudet in a Tampa Bay Times article and that might have pushed Boudet to retaliate in “an attempt to decimate my podcast." Suddenly, the one-star reviews for Obscura started appearing on Apple Podcasts.
Carman reports that something similar happened in 2018 when a one-star rating campaign was organized on Facebook to take down two journalists’ podcast. “Fans of several Instagram pages bombarded the show, hosted by Taylor Lorenz, now of The New York Times, and Julia Alexander, who’s now my colleague at The Verge, after Lorenz wrote critically about the women behind the accounts.”
Read the full Verge article HERE.