this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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164
Rotten Tomatoes Under Fire After PR Firm's Scheme to Pay Critics for Positive Reviews Uncovered (www.ign.com)
submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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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[–] Kerfuffle@sh.itjust.works 74 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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 12 points 1 year 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?

[–] Saneless@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

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

[–] gnygnygny@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago
  1. Grab $
  2. Manipulate critics
  3. Caviar taste better than tomatoes
[–] baruchin@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

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

[–] Fantomas@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] Zrybew@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

[–] brihuang95@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] alienanimals@lemmy.world -5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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.