Developers are sick of bots installing their apps and the Google Play Store has a solution

Something I never knew before, but should have suspected is that bots (automated programs) often download Android apps from the Google Play Store. You may be wondering why this would be a thing whatsoever, and well, manipulation of download and usage statistics allows listings to reach the top charts of the store and be seen by more real users.

While I can’t wrap my brain around why spammers would want to manipulate apps that aren’t their own, I can only attribute it to a desire to push specific types of apps or content to the top to suit their agenda. Anyway, XDA Developers alumni, Mishaal Rahman has pointed out that Google is working on a way to help app devs tell the difference between real humans and bot installs.

Google is working on giving developers a way to tell if their app is being run by a bot or a real user. Google Play will provide a signal that helps differentiate between "likely genuine" and "likely non-genuine" traffic based on "the presence and volume of Play Store activity."

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) January 3, 2023

Download Bots — Download bots are automated programs that can be used to automatically download software or mobile apps to influence download statistics. For example to gain more downloads on popular app stores and help new apps get to the top of the charts. They can also be used to attack download sites, creating fake downloads as part of an application-layer Denial of Service (DoS) attack.

Termii Inc., Medium

Deemed the “Play Integrity API”, Google’s new approach replaces the Play Store’s SafetyNet and helps identifies fake traffic or malicious devices used by these bad actors. So while this update won’t really mean much to you upfront, do keep in mind that as developers wrangle this traffic and their apps are directed by authentic stats, the listings you see when you open the Play Store will be more useful to you and less manipulated.