Rotten Tomatoes Under Fire After PR Firm's Scheme to Pay Critics for Positive Reviews Uncovered (www.ign.com)
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 07 Sep 2023 18:00
https://lemmy.world/post/4629547

Rotten Tomatoes Under Fire After PR Firm’s Scheme to Pay Critics for Positive Reviews Uncovered::A new report details how a PR firm paid off critics to post positive reviews of 2018 drama Ophelia on Rotten Tomatoes, prompting scrutiny over the reviews aggregator.

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Fantomas@lemmy.world on 07 Sep 2023 18:18 next collapse

I mean this was so obvious. Pay for positive critic reviews and call any user reviews that weren’t favourable names.

Zrybew@lemmy.world on 07 Sep 2023 18:34 collapse

Bad Boys For Life on 90 score convinced me the site was a fraud. That Shit is unwatchable.

brihuang95@sopuli.xyz on 07 Sep 2023 18:32 next collapse

I’ve been using IMDB for the past year or so. Anyone know if they pay for reviews too?

V4ty6BybVXjr@lemm.ee on 07 Sep 2023 21:04 collapse

There is a profit motive to polish turds and therefore someone will be bending/breaking rules in this area. It’s surely just a question of how much and how often.

agent_flounder@lemmy.one on 07 Sep 2023 21:59 next collapse

I think if the site is popular enough it will be a target for shills.

cheese_greater@lemmy.world on 07 Sep 2023 23:32 collapse

How does something like, say, Wikipedia avoid this issue? Is it because Wikipedia focuses on factuality whereas critic reviews are inherently qualitative/subjective?

Ascyron@lemmy.one on 08 Sep 2023 19:41 collapse

Honestly, Wikipedia doesn’t avoid this. People constantly game the rules to remove or change content that doesn’t suit them. I recall an instance where employees of a company were busted editing that company’s page, they were caught because there were so many different editors all from the same corporate IP. And that’s just the low hanging fruit that makes the news - I would wager there’s 10 instances that never get noticed for each one that people spot.

cheese_greater@lemmy.world on 08 Sep 2023 20:08 collapse

I don’t see why they can’t add that to its page. Document the corporate ips as part of a section on attempts to self-editorialize their wiki articles.

Edit: add them to a Wikiverse-wide digital wall of shame to immortalize their deceptive efforts

Kerfuffle@sh.itjust.works on 07 Sep 2023 18:50 next collapse

The title makes it sound like Rotten Tomatoes deliberately did something shady. What actually seems to have happened is:

  1. Rotten Tomatoes aggregates critic reviews. As far as I know, those critics aren’t really affiliated with Rotten Tomatoes.
  2. Some of the critics that make up that aggregated rating got bribed to increase their evaluation of the movie.
  3. Consequently the score on sites that aggregate reviews like Rotten Tomatoes increased.
Saneless@sh.itjust.works on 07 Sep 2023 19:37 next collapse

Thank you. Another post worded it to be RT did this.

paraphrand@lemmy.world on 07 Sep 2023 23:18 next collapse

The corruption of useful information or indexes of useful information continues.

Google Search, aggregated reviews, the Youtube algorithm, etc. They all succumb to corruption, greed and exploitation. Once something is good and useful, it becomes a target.

How does a source of aggregated information overcome becoming a target of corruption?

gnygnygny@lemm.ee on 08 Sep 2023 21:02 collapse

  1. Grab $
  2. Manipulate critics
  3. Caviar taste better than tomatoes
alienanimals@lemmy.world on 08 Sep 2023 00:15 next collapse

Rotten Tomatoes will also stop all new reviews if a movie is bombing. They definitely manipulate their ratings.

Edit Two Rotten Tomatoes employees downvoted this comment.

baruchin@lemmy.world on 08 Sep 2023 00:44 collapse

Title is misleading. Why Rotten Tomatoes? The bribes went to critics not to the site which is just a critics aggregator.