This may not come as a surprise for people living in the Far East, but for residents of the western hemisphere this type of thing seems almost unconceivable.

Twitter is up in arms over an image showing a young girl manipulating App Store rankings using a board full of iPhones in a cold room, with some viewers expressing utter disgust at the practice.

“This is how App Store ratings work”

A disturbing photo stemming from China reveals that some developers hire people to sit in a room with hundreds of iPhones at their fingertips and use a technique called “brushing” to rate apps at a fast-paced manner. The tweet+image caused a backlash from the Twitter community.

We did some digging-up and it seems the photograph not only is 100% legitimate, but it’s something that China is all too familiar with.

We imagine that most of the iPhones depicted there are running the same app, while the person “brushing” them makes it appear that different users are rating the app, leading to a rise in the App Store charts, and therefore increasing visibility, leading to exponentially more downloads and potential ratings.

For an app that rakes in daily revenue on ad impressions, this seems like a highly lucrative technique. It’s also degrading, and it gives the App Store a bad name.

Pay-per-rating

Adding insult to injury, this appears to be a normal full-time job for some people.

After a few more searches, we found new photographic evidence that this is a common practice in the country, and that “brushers” are presented with a payment plan that allows them to choose how much fake rating they’re willing to do for how much money.

The conditions in which some of these people work, as shown in the aforementioned image, are far from ideal.

The girl can be seen using her right hand to rate apps while her left hand sits in a glove, or a blanket-of-sorts, to keep it warm. She’s also wearing a thick coat and she doesn’t look too happy either. Well, it’s not exactly a career she’s building there, and she probably knows it.