The five-star review system is broken—exhibit 472,304, as David Pierce recently noted. Terry Godier, the creator of the RSS reader Current, has stumbled into an unavoidable and unsolvable problem: in the current review ecosystem, anything below five stars is a disaster, and so what are we even doing here?
Godier tweeted about the paradox: “You will see a lot of 4 star reviews that say things like, ‘This is my favorite app!’ or ‘Gamechanger!’ The apps that tend to have these types of reviews are often over a 4.0 in the store and are being actively harmed average-wise by having them, even though the intent was clearly not to do so.” Current, a well‑designed RSS reader that launched recently, has earned praise for its clean interface and thoughtful features. Yet its App Store rating hovers around 4.7, dragged down by those glowing 4-star reviews that were meant to support the app.
The problem is not new, but it has become more acute as app stores have matured. The five-star system, originally intended to give a simple, intuitive way for users to rate products, has become a binary trap: only 5 stars count as good; everything else is a penalty. A 4-star review, which in a rational world would mean “excellent, but not perfect,” now feels like a mild insult. Developers routinely beg users to leave 5-star reviews, and many users comply—but not all. The result is a perverse incentive system where honest, positive feedback can hurt.
How Did We Get Here?
The origins of the five-star rating system date back to early e‑commerce. In the 1990s, Amazon popularized the five-star system for books, and it quickly became the standard across the web. The assumption was that a 1‑5 scale offers enough granularity for meaningful differentiation while remaining simple for users. But over time, the meaning of each star shifted. On Amazon, a 3-star review is often considered mediocre; on Yelp, anything below 4 stars is cause for concern; in app stores, 4 stars or below is seen as a red flag. This inflation has been driven by the competitive nature of digital marketplaces. An app with a 4.2 rating looks significantly worse than one with 4.8, even if both are excellent. Users scroll past apps below 4.5, and developers know that every drop in rating lowers conversion rates.
The psychology of ratings also plays a role. People tend to leave reviews only when they are extremely satisfied or extremely dissatisfied. The silent majority who find an app perfectly adequate rarely rate it. This creates a bimodal distribution: most reviews are either 5 stars or 1 star. The 2, 3, and 4 star reviews become outliers. For an app like Current, which serves a niche audience of RSS enthusiasts, the user base is passionate. They love the app and want to support it, so they leave a 4-star review thinking, “It’s great, but nothing is perfect.” That logic, however, works against the app’s success.
The Real Cost of a 4-Star Review
Let’s do the math. Suppose an app has 100 reviews: 90 five-star and 10 four-star. The average is 4.9. Add just one more 4-star review, and the average drops to 4.89. That doesn’t sound like much, but app store algorithms weight overall rating heavily. A drop from 4.9 to 4.8 can push an app from the top of a search category to the second page. For a small app like Current, discovery is everything. Godier noted that the app has been “actively harmed average‑wise by having” 4-star reviews. The system punishes the very enthusiasm it was meant to capture.
This isn’t just a theoretical problem. In 2023, a developer named Marco Arment — creator of Overcast, a popular podcast app — wrote about the same issue. He argued that the five-star system “forces developers to beg for ratings” and creates a “never-ending cycle of anxiety.” He eventually switched to a simplified binary “like it / don’t like it” system, but the app stores don’t allow that. Developers are stuck with the five-star model, and they must play the game or lose visibility.
The problem extends beyond apps. Amazon product reviews, Yelp restaurant ratings, and Google Maps reviews all suffer from the same inflation. A restaurant with 4.0 stars on Yelp is often considered mediocre, even though 4.0 out of 5 should mean “very good.” The bar has moved so high that only 4.5 and above are acceptable. This has led to “review coaching” where businesses ask only satisfied customers to leave reviews, and only for 5 stars. The system is essentially broken by design.
Are There Alternatives?
Some platforms have experimented with alternative systems. Netflix famously abandoned its five-star rating system in 2017 in favor of a binary thumbs up/thumbs down. The company found that users were more likely to rate content with a simple yes or no, and the algorithm could still generate personalized recommendations. Netflix’s head of product, Todd Yellin, explained that the five-star system “wasn’t working” because people used it inconsistently — a 3-star rating from one user might mean “pretty good” while from another it meant “mediocre.”
Another alternative is the “upvote/downvote” model used by Reddit and Hacker News. It eliminates the ambiguity of middle stars and forces a binary decision. But that system has its own flaws: it encourages groupthink and can suppress nuanced feedback. For app stores, Apple and Google have stuck with five stars, perhaps because it feels familiar to users. However, both companies could improve the system by adding a “helpful” indicator or by weighting reviews based on the user’s history — a system that could detect when a 4-star review is actually positive.
Some developers have resorted to gamification. For example, some apps show a “rate us” prompt only after a user has completed a certain number of actions, and the prompt says something like “If you’re enjoying the app, please rate us 5 stars.” They explicitly ask for 5 stars because they know a 4-star review is negative. This is a sad state of affairs: developers must train users to distort their feedback to survive.
The Human Factor
At the heart of the problem is the mismatch between how users think about ratings and how the system interprets them. A typical user thinks: “I really like this app. I’ll give it 4 stars because nothing is perfect.” The system interprets that as: “This app has room for improvement.” A developer reads a 4-star review praising the app and feels a mix of gratitude and frustration. They know that review is actually hurting them, but they can’t ask the user to change it without seeming ungrateful or manipulative.
Terry Godier’s experience with Current is a microcosm of a larger issue. The five-star review system, designed to help consumers make informed decisions, has become a source of anxiety and distortion for creators. It forces honest, positive feedback into a box that says “inferior,” and it erodes trust in the entire rating ecosystem. Users who see a 4.3-star app might assume it’s inferior to a 4.8-star app, even if the difference is just a few reviews. The system has lost its ability to communicate quality meaningfully.
Some have called for a complete overhaul. For instance, the website Slant uses a “compare and contrast” model where users vote on pros and cons, avoiding an aggregated star score. Others advocate for a simple “recommend” percentage, like the “X% of reviewers recommend this product” used by Amazon for some categories. That metric feels less punitive and more informative. But until Apple and Google change their app store models, developers like Godier will continue to suffer the consequences of a system that rewards perfection over honesty.
Until then, the advice for users is simple: if you truly love an app, don’t hold back. Give it five stars. The four-star compliment is a curse in disguise. And if you are a developer, consider adding a note in your app asking users to be honest but also to understand that a 4-star rating can hurt your discoverability. It’s a band-aid on a broken system, but it’s the best we have for now.
Source: The Verge News