Signal, You Really Need To Calm Down: Facebook IS NOT Trying To Manipulate Apple App Store Search

At a time when the Signal instant messaging app is reporting a surge in new signups and new users as a lot of WhatsApp users have even spooked by the new privacy policy for the app, it has climbed to the top of the charts on the Apple App Store in many countries, including India, at the time of writing this. In a tweet posted a while ago, Signal says that Facebook has somehow got a hand in manipulating the search results on the Apple App Store, when users search for the Signal app, and pushed the Facebook Messenger app to the front of the search results. In a tweet, @signal app says, “Facebook is probably more comfortable selling ads than buying them, but they’ll do what they have to do in order to be the top result when some people search for ‘Signal’ in the App Store.” This tweet also carries a photo of the search result page on the App Store for the Apple iPhone, where the Facebook Messenger app, or simply Messenger, is listed as the top result. First up, what they see and what users often see on a search result page on the App Store is an Secondly, we noticed that when we searched for the Signal app multiple times on different iPhones signed in with different iCloud IDs, we saw some other app ads on the top of the search page for the Signal app and after a few searches, the ads disappeared from the search page completely.