PR Firm Has Been Paying Rotten Tomatoes Critics For Positive Reviews 35
A new report says that a PR firm has been paying Rotten Tomatoes critics for positive reviews for over five years. From a report: Moviegoers, critics, and the average internet user have all used the aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes at one point or another. The website categorizes films and shows from "fresh" to "rotten," with rotten being those with lower ratings. Now it looks like the site's scores have been manipulated for more than five years. As noted by Vulture, it looks like a PR firm has manipulated movie scores on Rotten Tomatoes by paying the critics directly. This has been happening for years.
The PR firm, named Bunker 15, is said to pay as much as $50.00 for a single Rotten Tomatoes review. The payments, which aren't typically disclosed, are usually given to obscure critics who happen to be part of a pool tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. Though it's worth noting that the aggregation site's rules prohibit "Reviewing based on a financial incentive." Director Paul Schrader, also a critic, spoke out against Rotten Tomatoes which he says is part of a "broken" system. "The system is broken. Audiences are dumber. Normal people don't go through reviews like they used to. Rotten Tomatoes is something the studios can game. So they do." The site responded by delisting a variety of Bunker 15 films from their website. Furthermore, they issued a warning to any critics that reviewed them. The warning emphasizes that they do not tolerate manipulation on their platform.
The PR firm, named Bunker 15, is said to pay as much as $50.00 for a single Rotten Tomatoes review. The payments, which aren't typically disclosed, are usually given to obscure critics who happen to be part of a pool tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. Though it's worth noting that the aggregation site's rules prohibit "Reviewing based on a financial incentive." Director Paul Schrader, also a critic, spoke out against Rotten Tomatoes which he says is part of a "broken" system. "The system is broken. Audiences are dumber. Normal people don't go through reviews like they used to. Rotten Tomatoes is something the studios can game. So they do." The site responded by delisting a variety of Bunker 15 films from their website. Furthermore, they issued a warning to any critics that reviewed them. The warning emphasizes that they do not tolerate manipulation on their platform.
This is Slashdot's business model. (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
What the frack is going on with Slashdot today? My comments are disappearing.
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And nothing of worth was lost.
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Wait, what?
Ya know, I feel kinda stupid now...
Slashdot pays me as well (Score:2)
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Why the heck did they do that? Sounds like a recipe for even more ACs which I dont think is terribly desirable.
Wait what??? (Score:4, Funny)
PR firm pays people for good reviews? How could this happen? I thought Rotten Tomatoes was completely above board and honest. Now I can't trust *anybody*, even Amazon!
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Rotten Tomatoes is in the business of making money. If they're honest now, it's just a matter of time before the quest for money makes them do things that they shouldn't be doing. They'll just bury it in the pages of legalese TOS you have to accept to use the site.
Re:Wait what??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Rotten tomatoes hasn't been honest for a long time and you need only look at how they justify actively interfering with their ratings to ensure that certain movies get the "right" score to see that.
In other news, (Score:2)
Captain Obvious is being bribed to be more obvious.
what a surprise (Score:2)
No problem (Score:2)
I get all my movie reviews from Siskel and Ebert.
I might care if there was something to watch (Score:2)
Well that was obvious. (Score:4, Informative)
It goes further than that. If you dig into the user reviews, you'll see pages and pages of 1 sentence, 5 star ratings with the same words by 'different' users who supposedly bought their tickets online from fandango and other services.
Rotten Tomatoes is a marketing arm of the movie industry. It is *not* a review site.
And this doesn't bring up the few reviewers who get to choose:
* Free night at the movies with dinner, invitations to special events at Comicon, Access to the movie's stars if they play ball.
or
* Bupkis, stuck out in the cold with nothing if the studio is offended.
If you use Rotten Tomatoes to decide what to see, do this instead: Go through various Youtube reviewers (like Alachia Queen) who buy their own tickets and give honest reviews. You may not always agree with them but you can use an honest difference in taste just as well as someone who has the same tastes as you do.
Man bites dog (Score:2)
And when that happens, it goes Yelp! Yelp! Yelp!
I know this isn't the first time I've put forth the proposition that we need a game theorist to settle this issue once and for all: Can a review site ever not become corrupt?
I think Consumer Reports is fairly solid, because its revenue is from customer subscriptions only, and it doesn't take ads. IMHO, that just means it has a huge target on its back. It seems like eventually there will be an expose on it too; but even if theory predicts a rise and eventua
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These days? No. Most try to mostly exist in a sort of gray area.
A kayfabe of advertorial if you will... the publication knows it's advertorial and the audience knows it's advertorial and the publication knows the audience knows the publication knows it's advertorial... But somewhere in the middle of all that, something legitimate might get through...
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"Can a review site ever not become corrupt?"
I think we all know the Betteridge answer. And perhaps the Heisenberg answer.
I would expect a games expert to state: All metrics can be gamed, and humans like games.
I think about the best we can do is to recognize biases and have multiple sources, when available. And still that doesn't always work. As Doug said, "Humans are a problem".
Reviews... (Score:2)
Audiences are dumber (Score:2)
Datapoint - Rise of Skywalker (Score:5, Interesting)
Star Wars fans knew in late December, 2019 that Rotten Tomatoes was a corrupt gatekeeper. The initial ~200 reviews garnered a rating of 80. Then the floodgates burst and the buzz spread about just how bad the movie was. But the statistically minded noticed that the initial rating did not budge over the first 2000 reviews, and then some much larger number. Everything is documented with screenshots on youtube. The statisticians concluded that such a pattern was statistically impossible, confirmed by the reality of eg the fan reception. All this sleuthing and digging also yielded the fact that RT is owned under the umbrella of Disney, and that the ratings lock was designed to prevent the box office take from cratering based on accurate RT scores.
Now this article suggests the corruption ran deeper, and for at least a year longer than we suspected. It is an important piece of the puzzle. Disney media absolutely has a bot-farm and paid shills on here so I'll probably be downvoted to hell. The RT approach mentioned in the article is nearly identical to that documented by the youtube channel Fake Review Watch for Yelp and other review sites. A circle of corrupt reviewers exists and is contacted by a company or in this case a deniable 3rd party firm. Even the rates are roughly the same, $30-50 per fake review!
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RT is owned by Fandango, not Disney. However the CEO of Fandango is an ex Disney exec. And Fandango are in the business of selling movie tickets, so it's clearly in Fandango's interest to have more positive reviews. Like always follow the money. It's been obvious for years that RT scores are being manipulated but The Rise of Skywalker audience review score was so blatantly obvious to those watching.
A number of reviewers have even publicly said they sometimes give a more postive review or a pass to movies to
Aggregate Study of Ratings Sites (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't find the original article that did a study of the aggregate averages of the movie rating web sites and identified the skew that each website tended towards but I did find new studies and articles. I used that original data myself to adjust my own scripts for the weight and cut-off value for movies and series that I wanted to watch and to download metadata for my collection.
The new articles below are helpful, especially the first one that shows the relative differences in the average scores for each site along with a few of the following ones that identify the skew for each genere of movies.
https://www.freecodecamp.org/n... [freecodecamp.org]
https://fivethirtyeight.com/fe... [fivethirtyeight.com]
https://www.wired.co.uk/articl... [wired.co.uk]
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/... [makeuseof.com]
https://dataanalysiscourse.wor... [wordpress.com]
https://ucladatares.medium.com... [medium.com]
The image that is most telling is the one below showing the average and the relative skew that each website has.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/wp... [fivethirtyeight.com]
Think there's a name for it (Score:2)
they can say it (Score:2)