Rotten Tomatoes now needs you to prove you bought a movie ticket before your review is reflected in the “Audience Score.”
The site also recently replaced the “Want to See” percentage with a “Want to See” tally for upcoming films. Basically, rather than a percentage score for whether or not audience members want to see a film, there is now more of a “like count” for whether or not users want to see a movie.
Combating review bombing
This is an effort to reduce the amount of users engaging in “review bombing.” Basically, users have been trolling the site and leaving harsh reviews for movies they haven’t seen.
For example, before “Captain Marvel” hit theaters, users bombarded the film on Rotten Tomatoes with comments about their hatred for Brie Larson and the movie’s “agenda.”
The review bombing brought the “Want to See” score down to about 28%.
Verified ratings
All users can still leave a review for a film whether or not they have seen it. However, Rotten Tomatoes will be differentiating reviews based on whether or not users can provide a ticket stub from the movie.
Users who provide a ticket stub will be thrown into a “Verified Audience” tab on the review page. As stated before, only these scores will be reflected in the “Audience Score.”
Verifying your ticket
When submitting a review, there is a new box that asks you where you bought your ticket. From there, the site guides you through the verification process.
Fandango, AMC Theaters, Regal Cinemas, and Cinemark have all signed up for the verification process.
Will this make a difference?
Unless users can figure out how to trick Rotten Tomatoes into thinking they bought a ticket, this should be a significant change.
Only viewing reviews from people who actually saw the movie seems like common sense, so it’s a nice addition to the site. If an internet troll just wants to hate a movie for the sake of hating it, they will first have to pay that movie’s filmmakers. Most likely, these folks will just take to their blogs, and hate on the movie from there.
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Read now ►Sure, sometimes we can make a good judgment call on whether we want to see a movie before we see it. However, our judgments should be based on the film and not our own gripes.