Netflix Is Ending Reviews July 30th

goombah99 writes: Netflix is sending emails to subscribers announcing the end of user-authored reviews on Netflix. Past reviews are being archived. The stated reason is declining usage. This follows on the previous years' decision to remove range voting for user ratings (0 to 5 stars) and substitute a thumbs up/down approval voting system. One suspects that the former is an unintended consequence of the latter, since the purpose of people who write a review is to try to explain the nuances of their decision. An inexpressive rating system defeats that. It can be argued that approval voting has technical advantages in aggregating ratings for a recommendation engine as it doesn't need to normalize the biases in a rating system between different users and mostly heads off gaming the system with exaggerated degrees of rating. But evidently that was also a necessary component of the review process itself regardless of its utility for recommendation engines. The email that Netflix is sending users is short and to the point: "You contributed a review on Netflix within the last year. We wanted to let you know that this feature will be retired on July 30th due to declining usage. We appreciate you taking time to write a review. All of your reviews will be available at netflix.com/reviews through July 30th."

Comments

They broke the reviews then claim no one uses them

[Kevin108]

Netflix had entered the big time, landing a special from Amy Schumer that was going to open the door for them to millions more customers, the way Howard Stern did for Sirius. But then...it wasn't very good.

There was their big star - fresh, uncensored, and squeezed into a scandalous leather leather outfit. It was going to be epic! Glitz, glamour, buzz...but then the material was flat. On top of that, she used the special as a platform to demonize gun owners, who never take lightly the suggestion that they surrender their rights, and she was an outspoken supporter of Clinton, who lost the election just days after the release of the special.

There are two types of people in the world: those who don't review Netflix titles, and those who do. Those who do were merciless. In a panic, Netflix broke its otherwise-reliable ratings system, then just left it that way.

If the show had been funny, people would have overlooked the gun rant. Without the gun rant, her performance and the leather probably would have been enough. As it wound up, it just didn't work. But I still like Amy, leather, and guns.