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Connect IQ store spammed with low-quality apps and watch faces

Aaron
5 months ago

Lately, the Connect IQ store is getting spammed by a few unethical developers pumping out high-volume but low-quality copy-paste degenerate apps and watch faces. They are essentially the same, with only the background image changing and usually have 0 or low star reviews. See examples below (in all the categories):

This is displacing quality apps/watch faces that developers here are putting real effort into. This is a slap in the face to honest developers -- why bother trying hard to make a real app if it never gets a chance to appear in the CIQ store listings?

Garmin - Is there a plan to filter out these low-quality results? This is degrading the Connect IQ store experience. I used to remember seeing more quality listings, but now after scrolling past 1 page, all I get are these spam apps and watch faces. 

  • 5 months ago

    hi, see this forum, you will find many thread about this.

  • 5 months ago

    - don't these apps count as a violation of Garmin's Terms of Use? 

    No Spam, Malicious Software, or Other Damaging or Disruptive Activity. You may not use the Site in any manner that could overburden, damage, impair, disable, or breach the security of any Garmin server or network, or interfere with anyone else’s use and enjoyment of the Site.

    • Making repetitive posts or posting off-topic content on a portion of the Site with a designated topic or theme
    • Creating, then deleting, then re-creating an account an excessive number of times
  • 5 months ago in reply to Shent-Aurkhan (SHN)

    SHN, you have created many amazing watch faces with thousands of downloads and 4-5 star reviews.

    But... I notice that many of your watch faces don't even appear in the CIQ store listing, because of spam watch faces like these! The only way I find the rest of your watch faces is by visiting your "More From This Developer" page. 

  • 5 months ago in reply to Aaron

    On the app store website, you can also search for things by name, and also narrow it down by app type.

    Even without all the watch faces you mention, there are still many, many others, and you typically only see some of them.

    There are threads here in the discussion forum about this same thing, and at least one bug report about it, all started over the months,

  • 5 months ago in reply to jim_m_58
    jim_m_58 said:
    you can also search for things by name

    You realize OP is talking about discovering new (to the user) apps by browsing the store? Clearly if the user already knows the name of the app they want, none of this is a problem.

    If someone complained that Google search doesn't work so great anymore due to SEO spam, would you counter by informing them that you can type the exact name of the site they want in the address bar?

    jim_m_58 said:
    Even without all the watch faces you mention, there are still many, many others, and you typically only see some of them.

    "Why bother fighting spam if we can't completely eliminate it?" -- nobody

    EDIT: a better analogy would be:

    ”Google search sucks now bc of all the spam”

    ”Well akshually, you know that it wasn’t perfect before!!! Common queries would return millions of results, but studies show that most people don’t click beyond the first page, practically ensuring that some sites are never seen”

  • 5 months ago in reply to FlowState

    Thank you for clarifying. Yes, that's exactly what I was trying to say. 

    Before, I used to enjoy checking the Connect IQ store to see "what cool new things did our community make today?" Then proceed to install and check out various apps and watch faces. 

    These days, I can barely see anything legit anymore... the store is flooded with spam apps and watch faces with 0 stars and 0 reviews.

  • 5 months ago

    Again... This comes up every month. And we'll just have more and more low quality garbage with time - especially that new and new watch-face generator tools will be there.

    I don't know how the collected data that Garmin has looks like, but I know from other "big data" issues I dealt with that it's not that easy to find the pattern and plug the hole, especially if you don't want to hurt the legit "small" developers even more by accidentally freazing their account or not showing their apps because pf false positives. But I do encourage Garmin to try to clear up the store and put some more effort into this. Though eventually unfortunately this is a cats & mice game, and as long as money is involved it will stay that way.

  • 4 months ago in reply to flocsy🤠

    Could an upload limit per month (excluding updates to existing apps) be a solution? 

  • 4 months ago in reply to Scarecrow123

    There could be many "solutions". None of them will fix it for a long time, it's always a mice vs cats situation. However the biggest problem is that for all this 1 thing needs to be happening, and it doesn't seem to be the case: Garmin should acknowledge there's a problem... (and care about it)