The showbiz, like the old saying goes, is a cut-throat industry. Winning an Oscar, though might appear as a hallmark of success at first, you soon realize replicating or succeeding that level of success a second and consecutive time is harder than most would think.
It is therefore not surprising that bad actors have taken to faking their movies and shows ratings on sites. Take, for instance, Rotten Tomatoes, the ratings and reviews you get therein is not always organic. In the sense that people might be tampering with the ratings and reviews by using fake accounts, bots, and trolls.
To curb that vice, Rotten Tomatoes recently introduced Verified Ratings and Verified Reviews. These are ratings and reviews from actual people that the site has confirmed to be genuine people who went out to buy movie tickets. And watched the movies in being rated and reviewed.
This new measure was put in place in March 2019, to stop review bombing. A coordinated effort to either lower or raise the ratings of a given movie. In a nutshell, Rotten Tomatoes is stopping the haters from hating, at the same time stopping sycophancy.
Only people that the site can vouch bought the tickets and watched the movies are classified under verified review and ratings. Reviews from such users will be tagged as ‘Verified’ giving other users confidence in the opinion they express therein.
The site will be able to verify you watched the movie by matching your Rotten Tomatoes email address with the email address you used for purchasing the movie ticket. The same feature is found on Regal Cinemas, Fandango, and AMC Theaters.
What happens to the unverified reviews?
Well, unverified reviews will still be there alongside the verified one. So, you really can claim infringement on freedom of speech, except the verified reviews will carry more weight.
