Among a slew of ease-of-access changes, review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes has today updated their policy on fan comments, seemingly in the hopes of mitigating the presence of pesky Internet trolls and general ne’er-do-wellism.
To pull directly from their blog post:
“We are disabling the comment function prior to a movie’s release date. Unfortunately, we have seen an uptick in non-constructive input, sometimes bordering on trolling, which we believe is a disservice to our general readership.”
Very politely saying “The Internet is full of jerks, so we want to try and make them a little less visible.”
The stance is no doubt taken in response to the influx of negative user reviews for upcoming cosmic Kree story Captain Marvel. The hateful reviews range from targeting the Captain herself–actress Brie Larson–for feminist comments to general Internet angst and misogyny. Nasty stuff.
Marvel Studios are no strangers to this kind of childish vitriol, with Black Panther receiving similar treatment about this time last year, and other films having been subjected to blind Internet rage via mass “downvoting.”
The steps taken are a nice gesture on Rotten Tomatoes’ part, though you’d think user comments wouldn’t be enabled until after a film was released anyway, but oh well. Whether this will halt the process of “review-bombing” remains to be scene (this writer has his doubts), though the hope is that the simultaneous influx of belligerent comments and honest opinions will drown the former in the latter.
These and other changes are set to start taking effect today, and roll out over the next few weeks.
HELLO, WE’RE MAKING SOME CHANGES [Rotten Tomatoes]
