What do 32,090 1-star reviews mean for Snapchat India?

A few days ago, I shared a picture of Snapchat's iOS app's rather counterintuitive rise in the download ranking on the Indian App Store following a controversy. Here's a follow-up to that post.

For those who are not familiar with the bad press Snapchat received recently, here’s a quick summary

• Around mid-April 2017, a former employee publicised certain documents from a lawsuit against Snapchat's parent company, Snap. Amongst a litany of allegations, the former employee said that CEO Evan Spiegel once dismissed his suggestion to pursue growth in certain international markets. He alleged (double emphasis on the term) that the CEO said Snapchat is "only for rich people" and that he did not want to "expand into poor countries like India and Spain."
• Reports about the alleged remarks spread like wildfire on Indian social media, prompting heated twitter posts from many outraged users with the hashtag #boycottsnapchat. It also resulted in 32,090 1-star reviews for their iOS app in a week.

(image courtesy: App Annie)

So what did the outbreak of virtual rage translate to:

Below is Snapchat's download rank history on the Indian App Store

(image courtesy: App Annie)

• Immediately after the controversy, the overall ranked rocketed from the 20's to as high as 2. The controversy may have prompted interest in / hatred for the app from users who may not have used the app before.
• In that week, the iOS app received 32,090 1-star reviews.
• After ten days or so the download rank plummeted to 35.
• In the past two weeks, though, it seems like the download rank is rising again. We’ll see if the needle resettles to the earlier normal.

A similar trend was observed on the Play Store: an initial spike and then cliff. But no resurgence here. Yet.

(image courtesy: App Annie)

Snapchat’s share price wasn’t much affected, if at all, and it recovered quite swiftly. Needless to say, its rankings on any of the other storefronts couldn’t care less.

Were all the 1-star reviews about the said controversy?

Here’s a snapshot of some of the reviews received on the App Store in that period:

(image courtesy: App Annie)

Clearly, a majority of the reviews didn't review the app but the CEO's alleged remarks.

This leaves me with more questions than answers:

• It isn't proven yet that the CEO actually said those words about India. In fact, they deny making any such remarks. As expected, this raises concerns about the mainstream media's dubious stand on editorial responsibility. On the other hand, are their audiences that gullible?
• Given that the download rank for the iOS app is rising back up, does it mean that people would gradually forget about this? In the grand scheme of things, is all this just cyclical? Should app makers be sensitive about bad press? If my exploratory study about the Uber apps' rankings, pre and post the laundry list of controversies it has been through, has any legs then the answer to most questions above is pessimistic.
• Do storefronts (Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store) have any unsaid moral or ethical obligations when it comes to managing reviews and ratings? A large majority of the ratings have nothing to do with how good or bad the app experience actually is. They are mainly driven by the sentiments triggered by what someone allegedly said in a company meeting.

Would love to hear more thoughts about this.

Thanks!