Rotten Tomatoes is changing audience review capabilities

[Slap47]

Like it or not, Rotten Tomato scores affect a film’s success these days. It’s important to make sure their audience reviewers both saw and liked the movie before letting them share their thoughts on it.

Steam recently made "positive review bombing" acceptable on their platform so I would be surprised if the movie reviewing industry did the same.

Steam :: Steam Blog :: Positive "Review Bombs"

In our recent post on User Reviews Revisited we covered our process for identifying off-topic review bombs on games, and how you can decide for yourself whether or not you'd like to see them included in Review Scores throughout the store. Back in 2017, we defined a review bomb as an event where...

steamcommunity.com

Corporations are getting more power in every area of society.

 

[RoofGook]

Ok, now democracy is under attack.

 

[Jewelsmakerguy]

"If our movies can't have positive ratings, nobody can!"

Also, a reminder that RottenTomatoes is owned by NBCUniversal and Warner Media, two big Hollywood studios. Is it any wonder they'd cripple the site to serve their corporate bottom line?

It surprises me that Disney doesn't actually own a stake in the site given how their movies seem to be the ones RT is most protective of.

 

[HiddenFist]

It surprises me that Disney doesn't actually own a stake in the site given how their movies seem to be the ones RT is most protective of.

That's because Disney has some of the most popular properties and bigger sway in the industry. It wouldn't surprise me if they have employees who who do reviews as well.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

I honestly can't wait until we just dump our movies in China and don't even bother.

 

[Freddy Freaker]

I only see movies anymore because one of my friends works at a theater and gets me in free. Didney Wors still made me want a refund. Clearly the only explanation is that I didn't want icky girl cooties

 

[Sīn the Moon Daddy]

I only see movies anymore because one of my friends works at a theater and gets me in free. Didney Wors still made me want a refund. Clearly the only explanation is that I didn't want icky girl cooties

Girl cooties, refusing to support an industry full of sub human degenerates, etc.

 

[moocow]

Wait, what about people who want to review a movie that they bought on a DVD/streaming services?

They don't get a vote, peasant. These guys don't give a shit. The goal is to eliminate negative reviews entirely, regardless of source, by deliberately restricting who can submit reviews and then filtering out bad scores by pretending they're "unverified." It doesn't matter how they're restricting it; what matters is they're establishing a standard where not everyone is allowed to have a voice. Only "approved" voices count now and they alone decide who is "approved."

They'll claim they're just restricting it to "verified" moviegoers, but I guarantee you they'll also silently drop or ignore negative reviews and low scores now, even from verified reviews. It's not like any of this is being done in an open fashion that can be audited.

This is a silly decision with a ton of holes like that, they should have done it the Steam way and given you the option to filter out the unverified reviews.

They want them gone, not filterable. They want all movie scores to go up (except for movies they don't approve of -- watch for review bombing to continue unchallenged for movies that dare to buck modern trends). They're doing it by restricting who can vote (to a group they think will vote "correctly") and discarding negative reviews.

It’s important to make sure their audience reviewers both saw and liked the movie before letting them share their thoughts on it.

I feel like this sarcasm here sailed over some people's heads just now.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

They should just go all the fucking way and give people two choices on Disney movies; Like (worth 8 points) and Love (worth 10 points). Just work the averages out from there.

 

[sentientgarbage]

pirate every movie! burn hollywood!

really though, i’m sure the corporatization of even the review process won’t come back to bite hollywood. this is the kind of thing the internet was supposed to prevent, but corporations won’t stop until the internet is as plastic as they are.

 

[Vorhtbame]

People will just go to Youtubers like they did with gaming.

CinemaSins is more honest than most reviews these days, tbh--and they just pick films apart on technicals and technicalities. Hell, they even "sin" their own favorites.

It’s important to make sure their audience reviewers both saw and liked the movie before letting them share their thoughts on it.

Ho ho ho, you clever dancing bastard.

 

[Bassomatic]

film makers feelings and big corp donations out weight what the lay people think, more news at 11.

 

[Haramburger]

Honestly critics should be gassed like the Jews (figuratively speaking as there is no evidence Jews where not gassed)

unbased grammar but redpilled message

So, uh, how do I verify myself in order to review a made-for-TV film like the Ewoks movie or something old like Total Recall? Also, when do we start patrolling for "most verified reviews" on RT and then start threads on the paypigs?

 

[Exigent Circumcisions]

I feel like this sarcasm here sailed over some people's heads just now.

This is the internet's preeminent autist containment center.

 

[Wraith]

The buttered popcorn ration has been increased.

 

[Clorox Cowboy]

Honestly assuming they don't just delete negative reviews from non-verified reviewers or hide them there shouldn't be a problem. It's just like Amazon verified purchases. That being said as people have mentioned, it's impossible to be verified for older movies unless you went to see a special showing of it.

Any of you deviants recommend another site that isn't rotten tomatos

IMDB is considerably better, especially if you don't give a shit about current releases. It's a great site for keeping track of what you've watched, and has a ton of information about the movie, such as cast, parental guides, trivia, and technical details. It's not as review oriented though it does have a section for that along with general ratings out of ten. Plus you can even click on the ratings to get a bigger run down of the kind of people who voted
Here's an example for Endgame

Spoiler: Image

It has the average 8.8 and then it breaks it down even more so you can see that the people who like it the most are girls under 18, and it is least liked by men over 45. It even shows american voters as opposed to non-american voters.
Pretty neat imo.

 

[Clop]

The site now displays an overall audience score based on ratings from “users we’ve confirmed bought tickets to the movie,”

thousands of people flocked to Rotten Tomatoes to negatively review films like Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Black Panther because of the directors’ implicit or explicit critique of subjects like racism and sexism.

Presumably the next excuse is going to be "thousands bought tickets to the movie just to hate the virtuous people involved with it."

 

[SmileyTimeDayCare]

This should help to staunch the flow of users leaving the site. In December '18 they were pulling 88 million visits now they are down to 67m.

How do companies not get it yet? Get woke go broke!

Though I guess in this case since they are little more than advertisers for films it doesn't really matter.

 

[HeyYou]

Remember guys, it's Rotten Tomatoes' job to protect multi-billion dollar corporations from meanie words.

 

[PoisonedBun]

Ahh, I’m gonna miss that 2 year period Rotten Tomatoes was both popular enough and unregulated enough to get an idea of how the average moviegoer will feel about a movie.