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.

  • Kerfuffle@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    61
    ·
    10 months ago

    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.
    • paraphrand@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      10 months ago

      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?

  • baruchin@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    10 months ago

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

  • Bri Guy @sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    10 months ago

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

    • V4ty6BybVXjr@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      10 months ago

      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.

  • Fantomas@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    10 months ago

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

    • Zrybew@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      10 months ago

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

  • alienanimals@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    7
    ·
    edit-2
    10 months ago

    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.