Netflix Deletes All User Reviews (engadget.com)

Netflix has removed all user reviews from its site, just like they said they would in early July. Here's what Netflix now has to say about posting reviews on its site: "Netflix customers were able to leave reviews on Netflix.com until mid-2018, when reviews were removed due to declining use. To learn how Netflix suggests TV shows and movies we think you'll love, visit our Ratings & Recommendations article." Engadget reports: Netflix probably had reasons other than the section's decline in use, as well. For instance, it had to deal with issues like "review bombing" by trolls hoping to bring down a show's rating back when it used stars instead of the thumbs up-down system. Netflix might have decided that reviews don't lead to enough views to warrant spending resources on policing them. It has a "percentage match" system that suggests titles based on previous ones you've watched, after all, so there's probably very little incentive for the platform to keep the reviews section running.

Comments

Trolling

[AmiMoJo]

It's probably due to trolling. IMDB is the same, certain movies are heavily trolled, e.g. Black Panther.

Re:Trolling

[TigerPlish]

It's probably due to trolling. IMDB is the same, certain movies are heavily trolled, e.g. Black Panther.

It's the same everywhere, just about. For a good decade now, if not more, I've felt forums and comments are nothing but a wasteland.. why I waste my time in /. I'll never know.. but I do know this: I've quit reading and posting in *all* the forums of things I like / liked. /. is the last one I've not retreated from.

Re:Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, it sucks when people express opinions they're not supposed to have. They need to be silenced.

Re:Trolling

[shmlco]

I hear that /. is going to remove user comments soon....

Re:Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

Racist trolls don't care about the relative validity of metaphors, it's simple stupid 'edginess', nothing more. see: GNAA

Re:Trolling

[vadim_t]

It would not be trolled that heavily if the media is not that hell-bent on forcing a "cartoon" into a social commentary.

Uh, what are you on? Comics were always heavy on social commentary. X-Men are social commentary with its mutants vs non-mutants dynamics. Frank Miller does a crapload of social commentary in his comics (often awful). Iron Man is social commentary, it was created by Stan Lee to see if he could make a selfish, drunk, industrialist weapons manufacturer, "shove him down people's throats" (Stan Lee quote), and make them like him. This was in the 60s, at the height of the anti-war sentiment. Captain America is social commentary. It goes on, and on, and on.

Black Panther being social commentary is nothing new, and hails straight from the source material.

Re:Trolling

[The Rizz]

I hear that /. is going to remove user comments soon....

At which point, will it have any real reason to exist?

Re:Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

How dare people contradict their betters! Hollywood and journalists know what's best for everyone. Those filthy unwashed masses should just shut up and consume!

Re:Trolling

[The Rizz]

1. Wakanda is not real (and for that matter, very different from the real Africa).

OMG! You mean there isn't really a country in the middle of Africa with cloaking technology and magical super-metal that can do almost anything you can imagine? I had no idea that it was all a lie! FAKE NEWS! FAKE NEWS!

2. Africa needs real help. Not from us, but from their own hard work.

... not sure if racist troll ... in fact, not really sure WTF is meant here...

Re:Trolling

[brantondaveperson]

Africa needs real help. Not from us, but from their own hard work.

The implication here is that Africa is in trouble, to whatever extent that's actually true, due to their own laziness. Is that what you meant, or is that just an unfortunate side-effect of your lack of care over the words you use?

Re:Trolling

[Truekaiser]

Add to that, supporting a movie that goes out of it's way to make fun of a demographic that is 'okay' to attack now makes it distasteful.
Can you imagine the outrage if the races were reversed? a bunch of white men and women hooting and hollering like chimps at a black man?

Re:Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear that /. is going to remove user comments soon....

At which point, will it have any real reason to exist?

slash-woosh!

Re:Trolling

[ooloorie]

It's probably due to trolling. IMDB is the same, certain movies are heavily trolled, e.g. Black Panther.

Has it occurred to you that Black Panther and movies like it might simply be viewed as a bad movie by a large part of the population and hence receive highly critical reviews from many people?

Re:Trolling

[ooloorie]

I'm frankly a little confused about the social commentary that Black Panther is supposed to make.

On the one hand, it seems to cater to the myth that wealth is the result of natural resources and that if only white men hadn't taken Africa's resources, then Africans would be wealthy.

On the other hand, Wakanda seems to be racially exclusionary and have draconian closed border policy.

Much as I enjoy seeing well-muscled hunks of any race strut their stuff on screen, the premise of Black Panther just seemed too stupid to me to bother seeing it.

Re:Trolling

[Presence Eternal]

I had a special hatred for people who used their reviews to review reviews.

Oh, you don't agree with my opinion on that show. Thanks for letting me know it got an award. From one organization. That gives awards for twenty subcategories annually. What a fool I've been. Very classy of you to post in a system that disallows any reply.

Re:Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm frankly a little confused about the social commentary that Black Panther is supposed to make.

Guess you missed the entire fucking plot where the angry anti-colonialist wants to use Wakandas advanced tech for his own revenge?

Re:Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

slash-woosh!

Thumbs up!

Re:Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

Is everyone who has a differing opinion to you a troll?

Re:Trolling

[AmiMoJo]

It has, but you can easily see that isn't the case.

On IMDB the movie had lots of positive reviews. Then suddenly there was a flood of very similar negative ones. All making the same nonsense points, e.g. that the CGI was bad or the acting was bad (both of which recieved awards).

The trolls are not very sophisticated, but IMDB relies entirely on flagging and does nothing to stop mobs so they don't need to be.

Re: Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd be surprised how many people actually believe that if it wasn't for white slavers, Africa would be an advanced civilization today.
Ignoring not only all the black slavers and tribal warfare, but the entire history of not just that continent but the entire world.

Of course given the fact that most Californians who graduate high school are functionally illiterate, it shouldn't be unexpected.

Re:Trolling

[ooloorie]

If it were that simple, then IMDB could filter those reviews easily. In fact, if you go on YouTube, there are plenty of reviews by people with a long time presence that go into detail of what was bad about Black Panther: acting, CGI, plot, politics. Yes, it seems like many people genuinely hate the movie.

Re: Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd be surprised how many people actually believe that if it wasn't for white slavers, Africa would be an advanced civilization today.
Ignoring not only all the black slavers and tribal warfare, but the entire history of not just that continent but the entire world.

Of course given the fact that most Californians who graduate high school are functionally illiterate, it shouldn't be unexpected.

Everywhere you find that blacks are more than about 10-20% of the population, there is massive poverty, crime, violence. Most of the violence is black-on-black. Including nations like Sweden that never had a history of slavery or colonialism. You can truly measure the health of a neighborhood based on the percent of black population.

At some point they have to stop clinging to the victimhood and start asking THEMSELVES why almost 9 out of 10 of their children (86%) grow up without fathers. Why in the USA black males are about 6.5% of the population yet account for just over 51% of all solved murder cases, primarily murdering other black males. White racism doesn't explain this. It's not like Africa was a peaceful paradise before whites came. Tribal chiefs would often arrange mass executions for the flimsiest of reasons just to demonstrate their power. Onwards through today we have necklacing (a horrifying way to die) due to things like accusations of witchcraft, female genital mutilation, child soldiers, and more. This is not done by racist whites but by blacks against blacks.

Taken as a whole, the nations of Africa receive about half of their entire GDP from foreign aid. Most of this is taken by local warlords. There's only so much the outside can do and it's not going where it's needed. Blacks needs to solve their own black problems. It's that simple. If you truly believe they are equal then it's reasonable to expect this of them. You would not hesitate to expect the British to solve their own British problems. What's the difference and who are the real racists?

Re:Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

Africa needs real help. Not from us, but from their own hard work.

The implication here is that Africa is in trouble, to whatever extent that's actually true, due to their own laziness. Is that what you meant, or is that just an unfortunate side-effect of your lack of care over the words you use?

Could it possibly be your own "victim narrative" hypersensitivity and the potential fact that you would not have made such an objection if the poster had suggested that the inhabitants of Iceland need to work harder to solve Icelandic problems? Plus there's the "thrill" of a potential "slam-dunk victory" of putting someone else on the defensive by implying they are a racist, making you ever so righteous and them so very wrong, ah the ego....

Re: Trolling

[_Sharp'r_]

Blacks in the U.S. had a much lower rate of fatherless homes and crime before the "War on Poverty" started in 1964 and the government took over as the "Dad" in families, incentivizing single motherhood. In 1950, the single motherhood rate for blacks was under 20%. Now it's over 70%.

When you pay trillions of dollars per year for something over decades, you shouldn't be surprised when you end up with more of it.

Re:Trolling

[rtb61]

Who is kidding who, the IMDB review system is broken as fuck, dominated by PR=B$ stooges given one off 10 out of 10 reviews for trash under multiple accounts. This in turn generates 1 out of 10 reviews by frustrated normals who see those bullshit 10 out of 10 reviews. IMDB reviews are a waste of internet space until they remove the PR=B$ hacks. Have not seen the movie, will not bother, it likely is bad because they politicised it on purpose, they knew it was bad and so the politicised it to sell it to the targeted audience ie if you don't watch this you are bad. Once they impression set in I just didn't bother with it. The PR=B$ stooges only politicise content when it is crap and that is the only way to sell it to the mug punters, as for ghost busters as for star wars as for black panther, you politicise content when there is no other to market high investment content (lots of money in, doesn't look like much will come back, oh no).

Re:Trolling

[djinn6]

There's only so many explanations for why Africa hasn't developed as quickly as places like South America or East Asia. You can't blame everything on imperialism, since that happened in other regions too.

I'd say of all of the potential explanation, laziness is the most optimistic one, since it's something that Africans can actually change.

Re: Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

Your link does not support your conclusion.

It isn't even close, which suggests you are being deliberately disingenuous (i.e., you are lying - definitely to lying to us, possibly lying to yourself).

Re:Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

In our new diverse world, diversity of opinion is NOT ALLOWED!

Re: Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't call negative reviews of a terrible movie "trolling".

Re:Trolling

[slashmaddy]

At that point, with noting left to read, I wonder if /. readers will start reading TFS, or worse, TFA (shiver me timbers!)...

Re: Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

If there was usage decline, maybe they should provide a manual how to locate the section? Designers killed Netflix. Can't find anything anymore, probably to hide all the missing content. Ie. Try to browse seasons and episodes without starting to view, you can't. Bad designs!

Re: Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

They also had a much lower rate of fotherless homes before the war on manhood started with third wave feminism, before modern manufacturing stripped the manufacturing industries of 90% of manual labor, and before the "war on some drugs" focused on prison time for selling the drugs of the underclass.

Re: Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

Imperialism in Africa was the shittiest, though, aside from the West Indies. Itâ(TM)s also more recent history than South America or SE Asia.

Re:Trolling

[Maxo-Texas]

Nah, there are so many posts, no one reads them any more anyway.

Re:Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's time for some sites to allow only identified reviews & comments. To know that people behind are real and his behaviour is non-destructive (critize everything everytime).

Re:Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

Black Panther being social commentary is nothing new, and hails straight from the source material.

Well ... sort of.

I subscribed to FF at the time Black Panther was introduced. That storyline did basically zero social commentary (aside from the fact of T'Challa himself being a black African king). The use of his character as a vehicle for overt social commentary didn't really begin until he was spun off into a title of his own (which only ran for a year, because the writer failed to understand the nature of the superhero comics-buying public - which is to say 12-year-old boys - and so didn't bother to make his assigned character appealing to the people who buy them).

I thought Black Panther was a cool idea for a superhero in the Batman mold: a Reed Richards-class scientist with the resources of an entire country to throw behind his secret identity, who had no inherent superpower of his own, but instead used technological gizmos and his own, finely-honed athletic and martial arts skills to do his costumed thing; and who specifically wasn't from New York City, like pretty much every other Marvel superhero of the era. The gag of having him test the abilities of the FF before revealing to them that he was seeking their help as an introductory device didn't work for me at all, but I didn't hold Stan Lee's shortcomings as a writer against the character himself - and, damn, Jack Kirby did a great job of making him seem larger than life ... !

(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)

--

Check out my novel ...

Re:Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't usually read TFA, but most of the time I have read the summary and comments a week ago on reddit.
Slashdot could be used as a substitute to the outoftheloop subreddit if you want to catch up on events after being away for awhile.

Re:Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

djinn6 opined:

There's only so many explanations for why Africa hasn't developed as quickly as places like South America or East Asia. You can't blame everything on imperialism, since that happened in other regions too.

I'd say of all of the potential explanation, laziness is the most optimistic one, since it's something that Africans can actually change.

You can blame an awful lot on the kind of rapacious imperialism that sub-Saharan Africa experienced - particularly under the Belgians. The natives benefitted not at all from European rule. There was minimal investment made by imperialist powers in building infrastructure, none whatever in education for other than their own offspring, and zero effort made to improve the lives of the people they exploited.

Slaves were not just an African export for European imperialists, either. Some of the natives were enslaved to work growing export crops, mining mineral resources (especially diamonds and gold), and serving their owners in various menial capacities. And when the Euro powers pulled out, basically all of the remaining wealth and resources wound up in the hands of settlers of European origin.

It took until the latter half of the 20th century before a majority of those countries gained true self rule - and the richest ones have taken the longest to get there, thanks to stubborn opposition from those entrenched interests. That, in turn, has created a climate favorable to strongmen and juntas as rulers, rather than functioning, western-style representative democracies. Low literacy rates (remember - these are cultures with a history of zero investment in public education as a starting point), terrible infrastructure (especially roads and electricity) outside of cities, ditto for electronic communications, not to mention the virtual absence of adequate sanitation, clean water, health care other than folk medicine, and so on in the most rural areas - these things make nominal democracy a joke.

And then there's tribalism. Most African countries weren't really countries before the European conquerors arrived. They were merely big, whacking chunks of geography inhabited by as many humans as subsidence farming and/or pastoralism would support, all of them products of their tribes or clans. (No mass communications, no real roads, little trade, large predators, and only the most rudimentary technology make life hard enough for primitive societies that they seldom interact with other people more than a day's walk away.) Thus tribes and clans became the basic unit of society, not nations, and the fact that a bunch of pushy white people drew lines on a map and called the result a country has had no practical meaning for the many millions of natives who still live in the bush and spend all their effort trying not to starve, even today.

And don't forget the ballooning population - which is growing so fast because the custom of pumping out children as fast as possible that was universal in the human race before the advent of antibiotics continues apace throughout Africa. This, despite the fact that, in the cities, there's now fairly easy access to 'cillins and 'mycins, and childhood mortality rates and deaths from puerpural fever have both plummeted (although, compared to western norms, they're still appallingly high).

I'm just sayin'. There's a helluva lot more to Africa's plight than mere laziness, and much of it comes back to the aftereffects of a profoundly malignant kind of imperialism that, for a couple of centuries, simply took and took and took, without ever giving anything back in return ...

(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)

--

Check out my novel ...

Re: Trolling

[_Sharp'r_]

What part of "The percentage of children under 18 living with an unmarried mother has increased substantially since the 1960s, with the largest increase seen among blacks" do you think doesn't support my conclusion?

If you look back before the war on poverty (which this article doesn't go back that far), you'll see a decline for decades after the civil war.

Maybe you should say something specific about what you think is incorrect, rather than just accusing someone of lying?

Re: Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

Never giving anything back to Africa, except for roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, shared language, writing, farming, animal husbandry, trains, the wheel... Do you really believe your own bullshit?

They had done nothing for tens of thousands of years, except fuck, fight, and die. Nothing has changed.

Re: Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you seem to be stupid, the comment needs to be repeated.

Your link does not support your conclusion.

It isn't even close, which suggests you are being deliberately disingenuous (i.e., you are lying - definitely to lying to us, possibly lying to yourself).

Re: Trolling

[BlackOverflow]

His link is irrefutable proof of his conclusion. It is supported with charts & graphs that show how black single motherhood has dramatically increased.

Re: Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

For you, you lying racist piece of shit.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/so-you-have-some-controversial-opinions-about-race

Re: Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not 'irrefutable proof', it's a lie crafted from cherry-picked data and flat out falsehoods.

Re: Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

Congrats! You just showed that you don't understand that correlation is not causation.

Re:Trolling

[Merk42]

Just re-read these after every new article to get the Slashdot comment experience:


TRUMP WILL HANG FOR TREASON

This article is about Microsoft, so whatever they are doing is bad because it's MiKKKro$oft.

This article is about Firefox, they changed a thing, that is bad. Or they didn't change a thing, that is also bad. Why if I were in charge it'd be the perfect piece of software that everyone would be happy with, but even though it's open source I don't even start a project about it.

This article is about Apple LOL "you're holding it wrong" AMIRITE?

Re: Trolling

[pots]

The other person isn't explaining things well, but the problem with your argument is that you're taking two events, seeing correlation between those events, and assuming that the two events are related. This is not a safe assumption, no matter how much sense you might think it makes.

For example, the article that you linked gives another possibility: "we should give less-educated women more reasons — like educational and career opportunity — to postpone motherhood." In other words, this is a suggestion that the increase in single motherhood could stem from an decline in future prospects for poor women. Something which has presumably declined disproportionately for black women over that time period. (I don't know that this is true, but the argument depends on it.)

Re:Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet Slashdot has turned into a shitland of pro-Trump alt-right cretins.

Re:Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, everyone who downvotes movies I like are trolls.

Re:Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

There's only so many explanations for why the rural mid-West hasn't developed as quickly as places like New York and California. You can't blame everything on the reduction in domestic manufacturing, since that happened in other regions too.

I'd say of all of the potential explanation, laziness is the most optimistic one, since it's something that Trump-voters can actually change.

Re: Trolling

[zugmeister]

Well, it started as cute / amusing, then degenerated into the usual tap-dance. White people are bad, blacks are victims because slavery. Yawn. Just another liberal racist* doing his thing, nothing to see here.

*Yes, the act of characterizing all people because of their skin color is bigoted and racist. Even if you're on the left!

Re: Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

Even well-meaning racism is problematic.

But what is worth fighting against is systemic racism that keeps new generations of minorities from breaking free of the class their parents are stuck in.

Poor, uneducated single mothers tend to raise poor uneducated children. Children who don't have a good example of a healthy family relationship and struggle as adults to form their own. If we want to break the cycle, we need are more black parents who are educated and have a middle class lifestyle.

Now here's where the controversy starts. How do we get to a point where children are raised in a stable household, so they can go on to grow up and form their own stable families ?

Giving people jobs, money, and houses is how the left proposed to solve it. The right assert that hard work will naturally lead to success, but they are deluded into believing there is more class mobility than there really is.

But generally conservative small business owners aren't hiring 1-2 blacks for every 8 whites in proportion of our population. And I think it is fair to blame institutionalized racism for the reduced opportunities for African Americans.

For your average African American, the justice system is harsher on the mistakes of juveniles, landlords are more thorough when checking reference and credit, employers are less likely to initiate first round interviews, parent led school organizations are less likely to back a black parent for a leadership role, and the list goes on. Being black in America is a death of a thousand cuts. There is a large swath of people in American who tolerate blacks, but still treat whites preferentially.

The only way out of racism is to keep calling it out for what it is. The only way to get African Americans out of poverty is to make sure the next generation doesn't have the same anchor around their neck as past generations. How to precisely accomplish that is a hard problem, and many attempts have famously failed.

Re: Trolling

[baristabrian]

It is OK. We know you feel safe and comfortableâ"living with your head up your ass and in denial. Some truths really are inconvenient. We understand.

Re:Trolling

[Shotgun]

The premise is that the Wakandans were wrong in their behavior. The conclusion of the movie flatly states as much.

If it is social commentary, the theme of the movie seemed to be that black people are responsible for improving lives of black people. I found it to be a very right leaning narrative.

Re:Trolling

[ooloorie]

If it is social commentary, the theme of the movie seemed to be that black people are responsible for improving lives of black people. I found it to be a very right leaning narrative.

Perhaps. At the same time, Wakanda's wealth derives from control of natural resources, which is a rather left-leaning narrative.

And even what you mention doesn't strike me as "right leaning". Saying that "black people (as a group) are responsible for improving lives of black people (as a group)" is some kind of weird progressive, segregationist racial theory.

American conservatives say that "individuals are responsible for improving their own lives", period. Race simply has nothing to do with it.

Re:Trolling

[Macgrrl]

> OMG! You mean there isn't really a country in the middle of Africa with cloaking technology and magical super-metal that can do almost anything you can imagine? I had no idea that it was all a lie! FAKE NEWS! FAKE NEWS! Well there is, but it's cloaked, and if we told you about it we'd have to kill you to keep it secret.

Re:Trolling

[yuriklastalov]

You are all cows. Cows say moo. MOOOOOOOOOO! MOOOOOOO! Moo cows MOOOOOOO! Moo say the cows. YOU COWS!!

Re: Trolling

[_Sharp'r_]

That's only if you assume that article is the only evidence. The link was just a quick google result meant to just show the correlation, because many people who blame the legacy of slavery, or racism, or something inherent with blacks don't realize crime, poverty and single motherhood had already gotten much better 100 years after slavery, before the welfare state war on poverty. None of the "explanations" commonly given in left-wing nor in racist circles even correlate with the timeline of the facts, let alone explain them.

Here's a summary from Dr. Thomas Sowell, noted black Harvard educated (pre-affirmative action) economist. Here's a longer, more detailed look at the issue from City Journal. If you want even more detail, including academic studies and citations, the best source is Sowell's books “Wealth, Poverty, and Politics" and “Vision of the Anointed”, but I obviously can't link you to a free to read copy of those. Here's someone who tried to summarize part, including some of the references to other countries which experienced the same issue, making the theory replicable.

I think there is definitely some room for additional contributory explanations like the "war on drugs" as well, although the timing on that doesn't match up as well for an inflection point. If you think about it, lacking education and career opportunities is silly as an explanation, unless you think those were improving for black women until the 1950s, but with the Civil Rights Act and such in the 60s, suddenly it all started getting much worse? Somehow I don't think that is going to hold much explanatory power. Correlation doesn't prove causation, but you do need at least some correlation in order to consider something for such a dramatic causation. When the same correlations occur in other countries like England and among other races (like whites), the pattern becomes pretty obvious.

The impacts of similar laws are demonstrated as recently as 1999 in Britain. I couldn't find a direct link to the journal article itself, but in news article summary: 'The prestigious Journal of Economics has published "The Effect of In-Work Benefit Reform in Britain on Couples: Theory and Evidence"'showing "the introduction of the Working Families Tax Credit has increased the divorce or separation rate by a staggering 160 per cent among women married to or living with a partner who either does not work, or who earns very little because he works part-time."

There is literally a ton of related evidence, not just a single correlation. Most anyone who has honestly researched the various timings, effects and related welfare system laws can see the same thing, it's not a big mystery, although it does tend to quash some people's kneejerk reactions of slavery, racism or some inherent racist characteristic.

Re: Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

That's only if you assume that article is the only evidence.
So what you're saying is, your link does not support your conclusion. Glad that you agree with the initial response, way up-thread.

Here's a summary from Dr. Thomas Sowell, noted black Harvard educated (pre-affirmative action) economist.
Alright, an appeal to authority! That's always a good sign</s>. And the implication that post-affirmative-action black scholars are somehow less useful comes across as a bit racist.

Sowell is actually well known for being very selective in his empiricism - RationalWiki has a decent summary.

Most anyone who has honestly researched ...
Wouldn't venerate Sowell, wouldn't just hand-wave away the effects of the war on drugs and the carceral state, would include the effects of the many 'urban renewal' dislocations, and would include information on the actual effects of single-parent homes (hint: it's often overstated by conservative media - the problems are more doctrine than fact).

it's not a big mystery
There's a statement that reeks of confirmation bias. If you start with a conclusion, then no, it's not a mystery. But in reality, it's a complicated topic.

Re: Trolling

[_Sharp'r_]

The comment about "only evidence" was in response to the question about it showing correlation. Since he wanted more info, I gave him more info. That in no way agrees with the "initial response" which stated the link in no way supported my point. Quite the opposite.

Also, your link actually says Sowell is committed to empiricism, among the other opinions of the anonymous wiki writers. You can also tell by the tone of the article that the people writing it don't know anything about economics, for example. You know, the field Sowell got his National Humanities Medal for, as well as his Doctorate in, as well as taught in at major universities for decades. Try arguing with his empirical research, rather than citing someone's anonymous opinion. Oh, that's also you, isn't it?

In summary, please learn basic reading skills. I won't be responding to any more anonymous coward trolls on this thread.

Re: Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't be responding to any more anonymous coward trolls on this thread.
Cool - that means I get the last word!

Let's do some 'reading skills' stuff. In the RationalWiki article at the link, there's this line:

This reeks of cherrypicking and correlation does not equal causation, despite Sowell's commitment to empiricism, as Sowell is basically saying ...

The word 'despite' is rather important - they are arguing that his commitment to empiricism is, at times, incomplete. You can't just take the words 'commitment to empiricism' as a stand-alone phrase.

Try arguing with his empirical research ...
Were you trying to be ironic? Putting that statement immediately after a lengthy appeal to authority sure makes it look that way. But at least it doesn't look somewhat racist, unlike the last time you listed some of his credentials.

please learn basic reading skills
Someday, when I'm a perfect writer like you, I'll start using that line. Until then, I'll take some personal responsibility, and assume that when somebody doesn't understand my point, one reason may be that I haven't communicated it well.

Re:Trolling

[KingBenny]

clearly didnt stop it from topping the box office in about the same space as the top 10 most torrented lol

Re: Trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

Incentivizing??? Single Dad POV: You're a fucking nutter. Raising kids on your own is rarely a choice . . . gov money isn't enough to incentivize it.

Re: Trolling

[_Sharp'r_]

Read up on marginal cost in economics.

The extra money for being a single Mom isn't the only reason, i.e. it's not sufficient by itself, but it is enough to push many people over the line between getting married and not getting married, and to remove some of the stigma.

So if before someone unmarried were to get pregnant and then say "You need to marry me and help take care of this kid", with extensive government benefits in the mix, they're much more likely than before to say "You're too much trouble, I'll just take what I can get in paternity payments and with food stamps, free health care, section 8 rent and some cash just make do with that."

The implication isn't that people are going to go out and have kids unmarried on purpose just for the benefits all the time, just that it's enough to make a the marginal difference in lots of people's decision-making around getting married, keeping another kid, getting a job or not, etc...

because now they are the target of the reviews

[nazsco]

before they had tons of dvds, they needed reviews to predict which ones to stock up.

now they control production and presentation. they will tell you what to watch and when. and you will watch and like it.

Re: because now they are the target of the reviews

[nazsco]

but yeah, people will also eat up the PR spin that it was because of trolls or, gasp, GDPR.

Re:because now they are the target of the reviews

[AmiMoJo]

They haven't got rid of the star ratings though, so bad shows will still get low ratings. It's more likely that the cost of moderation vs the utility of the reviews made it not worth continuing.

Re:because now they are the target of the reviews

[omnichad]

They haven't? It doesn't show in most UIs anymore. I can only give a thumbs up or down rating.

Re:because now they are the target of the reviews

[lgw]

I think the star ratings are DVD only. The streaming system seems to be an opaque "percent match" number, controlled entirely by NetFlix algorithms.

NetFlix had a pretty good run, but the decline was inevitable once they became both a content producer and distribution.

Re:because now they are the target of the reviews

[rh2600]

The cynicism is strong with this one.

When they had DVDs they had to keep physical inventory, and ship physical inventory, so predicting demand was important to their logistics planning.

Now they have unlimited inventory, and shipping is essentially instant and with zero marginal cost - so in that regard, demand prediction is less important.

Re: because now they are the target of the reviews

[backslashdot]

âoeWagnerâ(TM)s music is a lot better than it sounds.â -Edgar Wilson Nye, 1898

âoeThe movie is more entertaining than youâ(TM)ll feel.â -Netflix, 2018

Re:because now they are the target of the reviews

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite; there certainly still is a binary thumbs up/thumbs down, but I think it's fed into its recommendation heuristics more than an actual review.

Re:because now they are the target of the reviews

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we're experiencing different services. This story was about today's Netflix streaming service. They're pretty limited. Search for anything you *want* to watch and they won't have it. But you can watch tons of stuff you didn't really want to kill some time until you die. To distract you from the fact that nobody really likes Netflix, they'll started playing shiny distracting videos right away and hid their reviews. When that didn't work, they ditched the reviews. Next step? Just stream crap at you without you deciding what to watch. Because they know best.

Re:because now they are the target of the reviews

[AmiMoJo]

My smart TV still has star ratings.

Re: because now they are the target of the reviews

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bother. The star rating system worked. They tossed it. Who cares. They capture and rank based on views anyway.

Re:because now they are the target of the reviews

[UnknownSoldier]

> they will tell you what to watch and when. and you will watch and like it.

Nope. *I* decide what and when I want to watch. And If I watch crap like Hardcore Henry I tell others about it.

Re:because now they are the target of the reviews

[rh2600]

The 'unlimited inventory' referred to above isn't about range, it's about stock. Ie they have an infinite number of episode 1 of house of cards, not a limited number of DVDs. Their range is whatever it is, limited or not, but this doesn't have to to with reviews.

Re:because now they are the target of the reviews

[Anonymous Coward]

They solved the review issue.

There is nothing of value left. At this point its just lies and wasted storage.

Re:because now they are the target of the reviews

[azcoyote]

Exactly, it's all economics. The "declining use" of reviews is simply because Netflix has long prevented reviews from appearing in their apps. They didn't want reviews, and it has little to do with trolling. They want you to watch things; they don't want to warn you not to watch things, no matter how much they suck. They want to convince you that they know what is right for you, and what is right is what they have.

Re:because now they are the target of the reviews

[omnichad]

Might be a nice perk of not getting updates. If you're lucky you don't get loud autoplaying videos for each movie/series while browsing either.

Re: because now they are the target of the reviews

[Shotgun]

And they do a crap job of that. Without previews, the only way to know what a show will be like is to check it out. Get 5 minutes in, see that it is crap because the stand up comedian thinks we should all laugh at "Trump Stoopid", and bail on it. Now it counts as "viewed" and they ask if you want to see more like it.

I canceled my membership.

Re:because now they are the target of the reviews

[yuriklastalov]

My girlfriend laughed at me for getting angry at that abomination of a feature. You pause for a second too long to read the description and BLAMO blaring trailer in your face. No, Netflix, I don't want to watch the trailer for every goddamn trash Bollywood film you've inflated your library with, thanks.

Re:because now they are the target of the reviews

[Anonymous Coward]

(((NetFlix algorithms)))

Shut up and watch your feminist miscegenation propaganda, goy. That's a good goyim, there there, it will all be over soon.

Re:because now they are the target of the reviews

[omnichad]

It's worse when it's not a Netflix Original and instead of trailer it's just a clip reel with bad stock music.

Re:because now they are the target of the reviews

[yuriklastalov]

You should absolutely watch Singularity. It is not in any way a god awful abomination of a movie, nor should everyone who was involved in it be disappeared to a CIA black site (in Minecraft).

GDPR

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably also concerned anout pricacy rights. Why store something another service can provide

Crap Recommendations

[Luthair]

It has a "percentage match" system that suggests titles based on previous ones you've watched, after all, so there's probably very little incentive for the platform to keep the reviews section running.

Which of course doesn't work very well because Netflix didn't consider the fact the user stopped the video after 15 minutes and has no way to indicate they didn't like the movie

Re:Crap Recommendations

[TigerPlish]

Netflix didn't consider the fact the user stopped the video after 15 minutes and has no way to indicate they didn't like the movie

There are thumbs down / up buttons. I use them liberally.

I fail to see how someone "has no way to indicate they didn't like the movie"

Re:Crap Recommendations

[friedmud]

TigerPlish has this right - plus streaming services DO use the fact that you stopped after 15 minutes.

For instance, check out this article about why "Everything Sucks" was cancelled by Netflix: https://www.businessinsider.co...

I've read several articles about how Spotify uses a track's "skip rate" (how many people skip it after listening to just a small amount of it) to judge whether to move it from smaller playlists up to bigger playlists - and whether or not to recommend more songs like that to you.

Another crazy example is that Netflix pays attention to the type of _artwork_ (icon) you like to stop on or click. For any given show there are dozens of possible icons... and Netflix serves up the one it thinks will be most enticing to you: https://medium.com/netflix-tec...

This is true "big data" - these services collect every single thing you do so they can tailor the service to you.

Re:Crap Recommendations

[Anonymous Coward]

yes/no is too black and white for this sort of thing.

Re:Crap Recommendations

[Geekbot]

I didn't realize that. I was wondering why they did not have the standard movie covers. I actually don't like it very much that they change it from the box covers I recognize. But I see the point in why they do it.

Re:Crap Recommendations

[brantondaveperson]

It's hideous really. The artwork displayed against a movie or TV show should be at the behest of those that made the show, not algorithms that determine which image is most likely to get you hooked in. The whole thing is deeply anti-art, and logical progressions would be shows that are modified according to your tastes. Perhaps scenes are removed, or shown in a different order. Maybe different product placement is digitally inserted into the show, based on your preferred brands.

"The internet's great poetic folly, to implement this Markov chain of recommendations. You liked this, you'll probably like that." I can't remember who said that, some fella on the radio last weekend, but it's so true. It *is* folly, and it will eventually cause things like Netflix to eat themselves, so there's nothing left. Netflix, just be true to the content. Don't put ads in for other shows (another story from last week), keep the artwork consistent. Provide proper reviews from actual critics on your site. Spin off the production company from the distribution.

Re: Crap Recommendations

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the article "Everything sucks" was supposed to be a comedy?? WTF...

Then its is obvios why people did not finish even the first episode. Watchers expected "The Goldbergs" or any other of these nostalgia based comedies, and halfway through the first episode realized it wasn't that fun...for a reason (i.e. it's not really a comedy).

Well, or maybe a "comedy" in the sense of Futurama's dog episode or the luck of the fryrish.

Re:Crap Recommendations

[Wescotte]

I don't see the logic in using their own artwork since it's expensive and time consuming but I have no attachment to the original marketing material and doesn't bother me if Netflix decides to change it.

Rarely does the writer/director have any say in marketing and even if they did they most want as little to do with the process as possible. That DVD cover and poster you love so much is very likely created by something who had little to no involvement in making the actual film.

Re:Crap Recommendations

[brantondaveperson]

Maybe that's true, maybe it isn't. Maybe the poster is an important cultural and artistic artifact, maybe it isn't. But Netflix driving headlong down this road is still a folly, automated review and recommendation systems are the death of art. They'd be far, far better off employing real critics, with real skills and real insight - rather than this piggy-backing on individual users collective daily whims.

Re:Crap Recommendations

[Anonymous Coward]

For any given show there are dozens of possible icons... and Netflix serves up the one it thinks will be most enticing to you

This is super annoying, because they'll change the artwork, which makes me think it is a different movie. I'm tricked into clicking on it and "ding" the computer marks that as a success and tries to figure out how to trick me more. It's like programming a self driving car to drive slow in the left lane, but speed up if anyone tries to pass on the right.

I miss the stars

[bobstreo]

Turd up or Turd down isn't really of any use to me.

If it's Turds down, I'll probably never bother even putting it in my queue.

Their recommendation system is at best, horribly broken. Anything below 92% appears to be just a wild guess at best, and a feeble attempt to draw traffic to something I have no interest in.

There are many other different web resources to scour Netflix for things worth watching, I use instantwatcher.com
http://instantwatcher.com/

Re:I miss the stars

[thegarbz]

If it's Turds down, I'll probably never bother even putting it in my queue.

You had turd up and down before as well. Ultimately even 5 star review systems tended to bias in the way of "liked / hated"

Re:I miss the stars

[Anonymous Coward]

The stars didn't seem to be of any use to them, either:

Netflix would regularly show shows with 3 or less stars in my "Recommended" section.

I am STILL waiting for a "NEVER SHOW THIS TO ME AGAIN" button on everything in Netflix - I will never watch much of that shit, and it would clean up their UI wonderfully for me...

Sure, blame the trolls

[93 Escort Wagon]

I'm sure it has nothing to to with the fact that they had trouble gaming the "best guess for you" ratings on their self-produced content.

Netflix's suggested ratings used to work extremely well, back when they were only offering third-party content - I could pretty much count on my opinion matching pretty closely with their algorithm's prediction. But then they started producing their own stuff, and amazingly it always was displayed as between 4.7 and 5 stars as their "best guess" for me - so I'd watch it, expecting something great, but most of the time the content was mediocre at best, so my actual rating would end up being 2-3 stars.

I suspect they got rid of the star rankings because of their own show's relatively bad real-world performance - but that still left the problem of less-than-glowing written reviews. So the final solution was to get rid of those as well.

Re:Sure, blame the trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

So the final solution was to get rid of those as well.

.

Greetings from Germany.

We know all about final solutions !

Re:Sure, blame the trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh. Netflix is producing content. They don't need reviews, good or bad. There will be plenty of reviews outside of their platform. Why should they publish reviews you can directly see while browsing?

Do you find any relevant reviews of CBS shows on the CBS channel? Nope.

Re:Sure, blame the trolls

[ooloorie]

I'm sure it has nothing to to with the fact that they had trouble gaming the "best guess for you" ratings on their self-produced content.

It probably doesn't help that their "self-produced content" often involved various has-been celebrities.

Re:Sure, blame the trolls

[TheCastro1689]

At least for movies on Demand I get to see Rotten Tomatoes and Audience Scores under the movies so I have some idea of what is garbage.

Re:Sure, blame the trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, thanks for fucking it up. You made everything worse in every way imaginable, now the goddamn hebes are completely untouchable. Good fucking job, Germany. You deserve the cultural enrichment your precious Mutti has subjected you to.

Trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

Is why we cant have nice things. Thanks again, idiots.

If you can't take the heat

[Anonymous Coward]

delete the kitchen

just don't call it censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

cease fire stand down.. 115f this evening in northern new york, new tropics tourist trap. walmart practically deserted.. river rats on holiday... ladies & children first.. in the moms we trust..

Netfix and Amazon

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you, Netflix, you helped me become an Amazon Prime customer. Your lack of vision is amazing. Which is why you still do only one thing while Amazon does hundreds.

The wisdom of the crowd...

[PhantomHarlock]

Only the latest company to figure out that the wisdom of the crowds only works if the crowd is a small, thoughtful hand picked group with no trolls in it. That kind of thing simply doesn't exist in large numbers.

Most modern tech companies are founded on the concept of making a platform - any kind of platform - where the users do all the work for them. Anything the company has to do itself at scale using humans is very costly - any kind of moderation, screening or ratings. So they'll try everything they can before taking that kind of action. It's the 'cheap and lazy' tech approach to everything, and usually results in the dumbing down of whatever the thing is. At the scales they operate at, it's also pretty much the only choice they have in many cases. With Netflix that's not really the case. There are a finite amount of titles they carry, and a solid ratings system could be effected with a little bit of moderation and professional input, in addition to user feedback.

Reading third party professional or amateur movie critics reviews is probably the best way to get a good idea of whether you might like a show or not, as netflix' ratings and recommendations of their own shows are inherently suspect...

Re:The wisdom of the crowd...

[Kjella]

Only the latest company to figure out that the wisdom of the crowds only works if the crowd is a small, thoughtful hand picked group with no trolls in it. That kind of thing simply doesn't exist in large numbers.

Isn't this quite the opposite, that rather than relying on a few brown-nosing/ax-to-grind reviewers we'll just look at the actual, full user statistics? Now one good thing about Netflix collecting the viewing behaviors of everyone is that they should have a pretty good idea what other users have the same taste as me. I don't care about an IMDB-like rating telling me what "people" think, I want to know if I'll like it. I'd rather try spinning recommendations off that like here's some new shows, here's some classics you might consider, here's some divisive cult films you may or may not like, here's some popular films in the genres you watch... I wouldn't try to create any "global" scores at all.

speaking of trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

It would not be trolled that heavily if the media is not that hell-bent on forcing a "cartoon" into a social commentary. A few points for the real social justice worker (as opposed to social justice warriors).

1. Wakanda is not real (and for that matter, very different from the real Africa).

2. Africa needs real help. Not from us, but from their own hard work.

3. Making Black Panther successful doesn't atone for your "sins" (if any).

Here we have another ignorant motherfucker who has never read history, comics and thinks the Ayn Rand is insightful.

Re: speaking of trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

Folks this AC is an expert. Why he/she/it/pronoun proudly tacts their name to any post. We all should listen to them. Preach on AH...i mean AC.

Re:speaking of trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably only read this: https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/ayn-rands-anthem-graphic-novel

Too many duds

[Anonymous Coward]

Its the same reason they will now advertise their other creations when you watch other content. They seem to have a quality content problem and many of their self made creations are not attracting good reviews.

Re:Too many duds

[Anonymous Coward]

What, you don't like some shrill Jewess telling you all about how absolutely awful white people are? What the hell is the matter with you? I'm worried you might have slept through Holocaust class. You really need to get right with God's Chosen before something bad happens to you.

They don't report ratings, either

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect it has more to do with not freaking out their shareholders because their shows are shite and far fewer people are watching than they'd have you believe, the gold is in their licensed material. Makes you wonder if people are beginning to ask uncomfortable questions behind the scenes. After all this time Netflix is essentially still just a video rental business, minus the physical discs.

Re: They don't report ratings, either

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably just hit the exact reason why they're doing this crap.

The vast majority of their own produced stuff is such utter crap, that it's borderline of me canceling their service. They have a few gems on their like Stranger Things, but Luke Cage and the other Marvel trash made by Netflix on there are such poor production quality and writing that I really don't want to watch it. Then you have all the SJW type shows and movies that have totally flopped.

The reviews have been totally justified of their shows. They can claim they're trolls all they want. Forcing me to jump to these shows when I open the app isn't going to make me watch them. I don't want to watch it.

What on earth?

[SuperKendall]

before they had tons of dvds, they needed reviews to predict which ones to stock up.

They still have physical discs, they still need to know which ones to stock... however I would guess the queue is a WAY more useful metric for what to stock as you can put un-released discs there.

now they control production and presentation. they will tell you what to watch and when

They no more "control" production and presentation of all movies than a third grader with a steady cam does. They offer internal selection, yes - but Netflix still provides physical discs, as I said, and you can still rate them - you just can't write out a review explaining your rating.

Online Netflix hasn't had star ratings for like a year or more - but you can still vote thumbs up or down, and get a percentage match from other users who liked/disliked similar stuff. Even for Netflix content....

Ask Michele Wolf how much Netflix controls what you watch, never mind how much you will like it.

Sad for me...

[EdZep]

Definitely a loss of functionality. I read the reviews a lot, when shopping titles outside my usual fare; shopping a new genre; trying to decide whether to take a chance on an obscure title, or some B movie I'd caught wind of.

Re:Sad for me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree times ten! There were a few reviewers who really knew their stuff and made my life better by recommending similar movies. Netflix's recommendations are total crap. If the company had a lick of sense, they'd hire the better reviewers...

Re: Sad for me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Soon they'll get rid of the fast forward button so you can't see if the movie or show is utter crap and worth watching.

Here is your answer

[Ol Olsoc]

Mindy Kaling, on negative reviews of all female Ocean's 11: "If I had to base my career on what white men wanted I would be very unsuccessful,” said Kaling in an interview with Yahoo.

“And the thing about so much of what this movie is, I think white men, critics would enjoy it, would enjoy my work, but often I think there is a critic who will damn it in a way because they don’t understand it, because they come at it at a different point of view, and they’re so powerful, Rotten Tomatoes.”

Brie Larson adds:

“What I am saying is if you make a movie that is a love letter to women of color, there is an insanely low chance a woman of color will have a chance to see your movie, and review your movie.”

Larson informs us that more than 63 percent of reviewers are white and male. (Almost the same percentage of women to men in university), and only 18 percent are both white and female

Only 4.1 percent are female and from underrepresented groups

“I don’t need a 40-year-old white dude to tell me what didn’t work about ‘A Wrinkle in Time,'” Larson added. “It wasn’t made for him. I want to know what it meant to women of color, biracial women, to teen women of color.”

Now to my thoughts There are the reasons that quasi-official sites like Netflix are removing reviews. This is a pretty big problem, and the movie industry needs positive reviews, and the trend in movies is proving a to be a little problem. The people who make such blatantly sexist movies must hear that they are good, and if people do notlike them, they must have a a target of blame. To them, The all female Ghostbusters did not fail because it wasn't funny and because it was sexist in nature, It failed because of thos fucking teenage boys. As Kaling decrees. https://www.indiewire.com/2016...!

What is amazing is that ability to scream about racism and sexism, and simultaneous replace it with sexism and racism so blatant and in your face that you can proclaim people pointing out the problem with your work is somehow racist and sexist. The worm ouroboros as it were.

But anyhow, there is the problem - White males.

Re:Here is your answer

[AmiMoJo]

Making a movie for women isn't sexist. It doesn't hurt men.

And the problem isn't white males. You even quoted the damn explanation of the problem but somehow saw the phrase "white male" and had some kind of Pavlovian response.

The problem is movies being reviewed almost exclusively by people who are not the target audience and who don't understand them.

Geeks should understand this very well. How often do critics slate great sci-fi movies that we love and which become cult classics? The views of sci-fi fan critics get buried by the ones who thought LaLa Land was better.

Re:Here is your answer

[ooloorie]

Mindy Kaling, on negative reviews of all female Ocean's 11: "If I had to base my career on what white men wanted I would be very unsuccessful,” said Kaling in an interview with Yahoo. Larson informs us that more than 63 percent of reviewers are white and male.

Yeah, and for a film like Ocean 11, that's probably the usual target demographic, and that demographic doesn't like having political ideology shoved down their throats when going to a movie, nor do they identify with an all female cast.

“I don’t need a 40-year-old white dude to tell me what didn’t work about ‘A Wrinkle in Time,'” Larson added. “It wasn’t made for him. I want to know what it meant to women of color, biracial women, to teen women of color.”

I suspect the average struggling 40-year-old white dude knows a lot more about hardship than a lily-white, ultra-privileged, ultra-wealthy, ultra-bigoted actress like Brie Larson.

But anyhow, there is the problem - White males.

Well, it's a problem you have to learn to live with because we aren't going away and we're not going to change. Sorry.

Re:Here is your answer

[ooloorie]

Making a movie for women isn't sexist. It doesn't hurt men. The problem is movies being reviewed almost exclusively by people who are not the target audience and who don't understand them.

The people making these movies deliberately took movies targeted at male audiences and then put in an all-female cast. I think it's not surprising that "the wrong" audience watches them and then gives them a low rating.

Furthermore, not being in the target audience doesn't mean that people have nothing to say about it. The Birth of a Nation was targeted at (and a favorite of) white males like Woodrow Wilson, but African Americans certainly had every right to comment on it and criticize it.

Re:Here is your answer

[Anonymous Coward]

But anyhow, there is the problem - White males.

You're an insecure man-child. Did your mommy not hug you enough?

-- A white man with family and kids
GROW UP DUDE. Ghostbusters II was awesome.

Re:Here is your answer

[Anonymous Coward]

If Mindy Kaling makes a good movie she'll also find that it doesn't sell. If she wants to sell she's not an artist. Whining, fashionable, pseudo-feminist complaints is just nonsense. The best movie I've seen this year, by far, is Leave No Trace. It's showing in arthouse theaters. It's almost guaranteed not to be highly successful. Have I watched Oceans 11? No. Not because it's an action movie with women but because I'm not interested in fluff aiming for top 10 sales. Let the kids watch it.

On Netflix: I get the DVDs and don't care about their shows. Until recently I loved it. But lately there are more and more movies that are not available. This week I found one I've been waiting for at the public library. So maybe that's why they're removing comments -- because the service is going downhill in a big way.

Re:Here is your answer

[djinn6]

The problem is movies being reviewed almost exclusively by people who are not the target audience and who don't understand them.

If it was a great movie, that wouldn't have mattered. The target audience will find it one way or another.

Of course, I don't expect much from people who blame the failure of a movie on others. Not to mention they decided the target viewership before they even knew what they wanted in the movie, so it never would've been great in the first place.

Re:Here is your answer

[Ol Olsoc]

Making a movie for women isn't sexist. It doesn't hurt men.

I have no problem if there is a movie made that shows women roasting men on spits and feasting on their testicles. If they choose to hunt man like some folks hunt elephants and tied up lions that are tame. Let's get that straight. Then again, I'm not going to condemn men if they take umbrage at that.

And the problem isn't white males.

How do you do that complete discarding of evidence? All of those quotes I posted exactly lay the problems with the all female reboots directly at males. Directly at white males to be specific. Kaling and Larson specifically blamed white males and white male reviewers. Denying that is the same level of cognitive dissonance as a Fox News viewer.

Let us analyze the statement that Brie Larson made regarding just who was the problem.:

“Am I saying I hate white dudes? No, I am not,” Larson said Wednesday night when accepting the Crystal Award for Excellence in Film at the Women in Film Lucy and Crystal Awards. “What I am saying is if you make a movie that is a love letter to women of color, there is an insanely low chance a woman of color will have a chance to see your movie, and review your movie.”

“I don’t need a 40-year-old white dude to tell me what didn’t work about ‘A Wrinkle in Time,'” Larson added. “It wasn’t made for him. I want to know what it meant to women of color, biracial women, to teen women of color.”

Larson went on to say that while “it sucks that reviews matter,” the fact that reviews can greatly help or hurt a film’s success is just that — a fact of the industry."

Tell me just what that means? Let us work our way backwards.

Larson says that reviews , good or bad are a critical influence, and that this is a fact. (I disagree with that, but as a white dude, that would be mansplaining, therefore wrong)

Okay - reviews are critical. next up is the concept that a movie that is made specifically and only for women should not have criticism at all from those other entities that the movie was not made for.

So now we have that Reviews are a make or break, and that "40 year old white dudes should not be allowed to make commentary upon those movies. This is obvious because these movies must make money to continue to be made. Bad reviews = no money. And bad reviews are apparently made by 40 year old "white dudes" that she doesn't need to hear form.

Then finally, the incredibly obviously projection that the doesn't hate "white dudes" A far left version of projection and dog whistle. A time honored Republican tactic, starting out by denying what you are guilty of.

You even quoted the damn explanation of the problem but somehow saw the phrase "white male" and had some kind of Pavlovian response.

Cute.

The problem is movies being reviewed almost exclusively by people who are not the target audience and who don't understand them.

So it is the no one can understand but a woman card?. Tell me why a male cannot understand these movies? Only a woman can understand these movies?

Geeks should understand this very well. How often do critics slate great sci-fi movies that we love and which become cult classics? The views of sci-fi fan critics get buried by the ones who thought LaLa Land was better.

You answered your own question. If the all female cast of GhostBusters becomes a cult classic, or Ocean's 11 does, the films will acheive immortality not related to the reviewers. The problem though, is the definition of good. These films are made specifically for a sub group of women as some sort of signal that the fact that a previous male and female mixed cast is removed and replaced with an all female cast, and that makes the movie better. Story line

Re:Here is your answer

[Ol Olsoc]

The people making these movies deliberately took movies targeted at male audiences and then put in an all-female cast. I think it's not surprising that "the wrong" audience watches them and then gives them a low rating.

And let us not forget that Ghostbusters was target at children.

Furthermore, not being in the target audience doesn't mean that people have nothing to say about it. The Birth of a Nation was targeted at (and a favorite of) white males like Woodrow Wilson, but African Americans certainly had every right to comment on it and criticize it.

The concept of males "not understanding" is yet another sexist idea that some women have, an extension of yet one more of their stereotypes. I watched "Steel Magnolias" a movie obviously made for women, and I "got it". I had no problem with it. Wasn't ordinarily my type of movie, but I didn't get bored and stop.

And the biggest aspect of the movie was that there was no jarring content - the reason that the movie was overwhelmingly female starred fir right in.

I howled at "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" Another "chick flick" that ended up crossing over to allowing everyone to enjoy it - it made good sense.

These are good stories, shot and edited well.Touching and both touching and funny. I suppose some of our more radical posters would see some sort of Patriarchal contamination in me just mentioning 2 movies about wome getting married, but that's their problem - I only mention those because they were fine movies.

Re:Here is your answer

[Anonymous Coward]

even better is lack luster performance using a horrible cast. Even the biased reviewers coudnt say anything nice about the film.

It failed because it was terrible.

Re:Here is your answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey shill, if the target audiences make up less than 15% of the potential viewer base, well that's a recipe for disaster when it comes to making money. Your group is always talking about how these minorities are poor, have no money, etc... How are they supposed to afford the $10 movie ticket, plus concession fees that they're dumb enough to fork over for?

This isn't about people of one genre reviewing something in a different genre, which you disingenuously paint it as, but targeting people of a different race. The fact is, the black population can't gain the revenues a studio would seek with any film by itself, for example. If you weren't too busy trying to consensus crack for your handlers, you'd have an ounce of respect for yourself and not make your dumb comments.

Re:Here is your answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I'm a sci-fi fan and I enjoyed La La Land, you insensitive clod!

Re:Here is your answer

[AmiMoJo]

She said

there is an insanely low chance a woman of color will have a chance to see your movie, and review your movie.

and you concluded

So now we have that Reviews are a make or break, and that "40 year old white dudes should not be allowed to make commentary upon those movies. This is obvious because these movies must make money to continue to be made. Bad reviews = no money. And bad reviews are apparently made by 40 year old "white dudes" that she doesn't need to hear form.

This is is leap of logic that makes no sense. She is clearly saying that the problem is the lack of reviews by women of colour, and the obvious solution is to publish reviews by women of colour. How does any of that require 40 year old while men to be banned from writing reviews?

Re:Here is your answer

[AmiMoJo]

And let us not forget that Ghostbusters was target at children.

Not really. Most of the jokes would have gone over the heads of kids. Like the original it was aimed at adults, with adult humour.

The concept of males "not understanding" is yet another sexist idea that some women have

It's not a question of "not understanding", it's a question of being the target audience and having experiences that make the movie relevant to you.

I'm a bit old for Disney movies these days. I do have a certain appreciation for the old Transformers animated movie though, because it was a part of my childhood. It's not that I don't understand Disney movies, or even don't enjoy them on a certain level, but I'm probably not the guy you want to ask for advice on if they are good or not. I don't really know if you kid will like them, because I don't have any experience of being a kid in 2018.

Of course it's not impossible for white male critics to understand these movies or even do excellent reviews of them, but if we go back to reality for a moment we find that in practice this tends not to happen. So asking for more reviews by people who are the target audience seems entirely reasonable.

Re:Here is your answer

[DNS-and-BIND]

Yeah but do those reviews get deleted? That's the problem here.

Re: Here is your answer

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love to hear you argue this exact argument, but reverse male with female.

Tell us all about how men just don't enjoy certain things, on average, that women do.

You did actually read the Damore memo, I see. You've even internalized it. I'm glad we can all agree now that men and women are not 100% exactly biologically identical. Now shut the fuck up.

Re:Here is your answer

[cascadingstylesheet]

Making a movie for women isn't sexist. It doesn't hurt men.

And the problem isn't white males. You even quoted the damn explanation of the problem but somehow saw the phrase "white male" and had some kind of Pavlovian response.

The problem is movies being reviewed almost exclusively by people who are not the target audience and who don't understand them.

Geeks should understand this very well. How often do critics slate great sci-fi movies that we love and which become cult classics? The views of sci-fi fan critics get buried by the ones who thought LaLa Land was better.

Then the people who are upset about that should leave more reviews. Or ignore the reviews.

Re:Here is your answer

[Ol Olsoc]

This is is leap of logic that makes no sense. She is clearly saying that the problem is the lack of reviews by women of colour, and the obvious solution is to publish reviews by women of colour. How does any of that require 40 year old while men to be banned from writing reviews?

It means that at very best that the reviewer must identify their sex in order to have their review validated as acceptable or not acceptable. A white male would automatically lose validation while a non-white woman would gain validation.

Review sites like Rotten Tomatoes work by averaging scores given by reviewers, although they already toss some low scores on movies. This means that at best, in order to marginalize the numerical value of one group, another must be promoted.

So now identity politics has reared it's head. If these men who women do not need to see their reviews are marginalized - at best - are prohibited from reviewing or having their reviews discounted because they are males, a few problems pop up.

What about Gay males? What about males who identify as feminists? What about trans males? What about trans females? What about the large and expanding numbers of genders

And she is really assuming that all of her women of color will march in lockstep with her narrative.

Finally - have the identity wars gone so far as to now exclude white women?

Good gawd, a return to the past, where people are judged by externalities like sex and skin pigmentation!

Fact is her racist and sexist and ageist "40 year old white dudes" statement illustrates, she doesn't want those reviews done by that group.

Now after all of the racist and sexist rhetoric dies down a bit, Occam's razor tells us that the movies they are complaining about simply are not very good movies. Group psychology also tells us that these people are just pissed off, and looking for a convenient target to blame the failure of the movie(s) upon.

Movies in the past have done very well or failed despite reviewers opinions. If these movies were good, they would be judged by the public on their own merits.

I would suggest that in order to salve their wounds and achieve their goals, that they start their own review sites, populated by only the races and sexes that they believe will give accurate reviews, and exclude any that they believe will not. Then only post reviews that promote their political agenda, and suppress scores of movies that do not fit their narrative. All then will be fair and balanced.

Re:Here is your answer

[strikethree]

I read the book, A Wrinkle in Time, when I was a kid. I loved the book. I thought it was awesome. I did not see the movie; although I wanted to. If it is not a re-creation of the book, but rather a sexist screed, should they be surprised that it failed where the book succeeded? Seriously, the book was awesome. WTF people?

Re:Here is your answer

[AmiMoJo]

It means that at very best that the reviewer must identify their sex in order to have their review validated as acceptable or not acceptable.

Only if you take it to an absolutely absurd extreme which is not what is being suggested.

Maybe when a critic notices that the movie doesn't seem to be aimed at them and realizes that they might not be the best placed person to judge its merits, they could decline to review it and let someone more suited do the job?

No "validation" or enforcement required, just a polite suggestion.

Re:Here is your answer

[strikethree]

Making a movie for women isn't sexist. It doesn't hurt men.

The book was not sexist. Why do you give a free pass to anti-male stuff and call it "for women"?

The book was a story with a female as the protagonist. It was a great story. It was neither for males nor females. It was just a story that was very interesting. Why bring identity politics into it?

I am a white male. I do not see a story about a white male and think to myself, "This must be a great book that appeals to me.", so why was a story about a white female spun as a story that appeals to women? It makes no sense.

Re:Here is your answer

[luther349]

just stop it. the problem is there bad movies with a cast of old butched up dykes who are to old to even be in a action movie.

Re:Here is your answer

[luther349]

they dont understand is just a excuse for we made a shit movie and dont wanna own up to it.

Re:Here is your answer

[luther349]

a horrible cast that got there start in old white guy films they now bash.

Re:Here is your answer

[AmiMoJo]

Why do you give a free pass to anti-male stuff and call it "for women"?

What stuff specifically are you referring to?

Re:Here is your answer

[Ol Olsoc]

And let us not forget that Ghostbusters was target at children.

Not really. Most of the jokes would have gone over the heads of kids. Like the original it was aimed at adults, with adult humour.

To be certain, I'm speaking of the original "Ghostbusters" My attic full of Ghostbuster toys and my son and his friends playing with them and their anxious wait for the new movies and two competing cartoon shows would indicate that they were indeed children's movies. That they had adult jokes that children might not get is not unusual in children's movies.

The concept of males "not understanding" is yet another sexist idea that some women have

It's not a question of "not understanding", it's a question of being the target audience and having experiences that make the movie relevant to you.

Well then, tell the moviegoing public which films that are allowed to see or not see and which ones the holder of penises are allowed to comment on.

Sorry Animojo, but you are ignoring the very attitudes and commentary of the specific women involved in the demand to exclude males from reviewing these women only films.

I deny your claim that women are saying men don't understand. Mindy Kaling:

On the subject of Ocean’s 8, Kaling said: “And the thing about so much of what this movie is, I think white men, critics would enjoy it, would enjoy my work, but often I think there is a critic who will damn it in a way because they don’t understand it, because they come at it at a different point of view, and they’re so powerful, Rotten Tomatoes.”

White men AKA White - race, AKA men, Sex There was a time when calling out an entire sex was considered sexist, and an entire race of members of that sex was considered racist, - and please elaborate how "they don't understand it" is not sayingf that these white men do not understand it. Looking forward to your rebuttal of Mindy Kaling.

Re:Here is your answer

[Ol Olsoc]

they dont understand is just a excuse for we made a shit movie and dont wanna own up to it.

Occam's razor says it is true. One of the worst avenues to improve is to refuse to take telling.

Ocean's 8 received a 67 percent favorable rating with professional reviewers, and a 47 percent among non-professionals. https://www.rottentomatoes.com... Okay - mixed reviews. But perhaps rather then simply demanding that everyone love the movie, perhaps instead of telling anyone who had a criticism of it they are white males, therefore not relevant, and that the movie "wasn't for them" and that because they are white males, they were not capable of understanding the greatness of the movie, and that their opinion means not one thing......

Perhaps rather than a "fuck you" to 49 percent of the audience, they might ask exactly why a large part of that 49 percent has an issue with the movie. Shouldn't movies not exclude people by sex? But we have moved way beyond inclusivity, and into attempted domination.

Pointing out Kaling's misandry and racism should never be verboten, opposing female supremacists should be as important as pointing out white supremacists. A lot of people don't want to hear it, but a female supremacist and a white supremacist's brains think the same way, they only have a different group they demand be subjugated.

Re:Here is your answer

[Anonymous Coward]

I recently re-read "A Wrinkle in Time" as I was reading it to my kids. So much changes over the decades -- when I was a kid I also thought it was great. It was not, I simply lacked the reference position to properly evaluate it. To be more specific, it was posited as being science fiction, but was instead a weirdly religious tract that was poorly written (bad plotting, dialogue, pretty much everything).

An even worse example would be Ray Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles". When I read them as a kid I thought they were great -- my dad refused to have any truck with them as being utter garbage. It only took a couple of years -- I was only a teenager -- and I realized he had been right. Utter garbage.

The counter examples are, I think, instructive. For example, CS Lewis' "Out of the Silent Planet" trilogy. It is loosely science fiction and I think it qualifies as "weirdly religious" -- but it is well written with a coherent and effective plot. Where "A Wrinkle in Time" plods with tedium, CS Lewis could give exposition of his religious views while being engaging and avoid being trite.

The Bartimaeus trilogy is marketed as being for young adults ("childrens novels" is the marketing line). It caught my eye when I saw a nephew reading it and so I read it as an adult. Well written from all angles, it has a good plot, characterization, dialogue, etc.

If a book is only good when read as a juvenile it quite simply isn't good. Any success it has is by leveraging the lack of reference the reader has. There is no necessity in dumbing down material when writing for youth and no grace in writing poorly then marketing it at readers who lack the reference to realize it, even if that is the modus operandi for most writers and publishers.

Re:Here is your answer

[Ol Olsoc]

I read the book, A Wrinkle in Time, when I was a kid. I loved the book. I thought it was awesome. I did not see the movie; although I wanted to. If it is not a re-creation of the book, but rather a sexist screed, should they be surprised that it failed where the book succeeded? Seriously, the book was awesome. WTF people?

The trend is pandering not to people who want inclusivity or equality. The modern trend is toward females being elevated to gender and race based supremacy.

Re:Here is your answer

[Ol Olsoc]

It means that at very best that the reviewer must identify their sex in order to have their review validated as acceptable or not acceptable.

Only if you take it to an absolutely absurd extreme which is not what is being suggested.

How will the women who are angry at white males reviewing films that are not made for white males know that the white males and their negative reviews are being kept from negative revieiwing these movies? How do you propose keeping men from making negative reviews? It has to be remembered that sites like Rotten tomatoes have two groups. A professional group that it is possible to remove males from and replace them with women of color, who are vetted for a predisposition to rate female only films in the way that is acceptable, and non-professionals. With these non-professionals, there will need to be a different way to exclude men from making reviews. Otherwise, the professional reviewers who are now politically reliable will deviate even further from the males, and their wrong reviews.

Maybe when a critic notices that the movie doesn't seem to be aimed at them and realizes that they might not be the best placed person to judge its merits, they could decline to review it and let someone more suited do the job?

No "validation" or enforcement required, just a polite suggestion.

Oh my - that just goes to show how sexist those who claim to oppose sexism have come. You concept that I am not capable of making a criticism of a movie because it is geared toward women is just that. I trust your bizzare self censorship model includes women excluding themselves from movies that might be aimed at men? IOW, you would tell Mindy Kaling to keep her mouth shut because she doesn't understand the first Ocean's movies?

Re:Here is your answer

[AmiMoJo]

I'm speaking of the original "Ghostbusters" My attic full of Ghostbuster toys

It was the 80s, they made Robocop toys and a cartoon... Despite the film being very much adults only. I mean, there was some pretty strongly implied oral sex at one point, and I remember how conservative ratings were in the 1980s US...

Well then, tell the moviegoing public which films that are allowed to see or not see and which ones the holder of penises are allowed to comment on.

Surely if they read the review and it was talking about how the movie was really relevant to black people they could just decide if that was something that interested them or not.

I think white men, critics would enjoy it, would enjoy my work, but often I think there is a critic who will damn it in a way because they donâ(TM)t understand it

She says there are white men who would enjoy it... And then you claim she is blaming the entire white race. That is not a logical chain of reasoning.

And really, she couches that statement is such soft language, and speaking off the cuff. You are reading a lot into it that isn't there.

Re:Here is your answer

[Ol Olsoc]

I think white men, critics would enjoy it, would enjoy my work, but often I think there is a critic who will damn it in a way because they donâ(TM)t understand it

She says there are white men who would enjoy it... And then you claim she is blaming the entire white race. That is not a logical chain of reasoning.

And really, she couches that statement is such soft language, and speaking off the cuff. You are reading a lot into it that isn't there.

Not dissimilar to a white supremacist saying he isn't racist. You take the totality of ther statement, not that she thinks that white men, critics would enjoy it. Cherry picking is something best reserved for AGW deniers, and creationists.

Re:Here is your answer

[Ol Olsoc]

I think white men, critics would enjoy it, would enjoy my work, but often I think there is a critic who will damn it in a way because they donâ(TM)t understand it

She says there are white men who would enjoy it... And then you claim she is blaming the entire white race. That is not a logical chain of reasoning.

And really, she couches that statement is such soft language, and speaking off the cuff. You are reading a lot into it that isn't there.

Not dissimilar to a white supremacist saying he isn't racist. You take the totality of ther statement, not that she thinks that white men, critics would enjoy it. Cherry picking is something best reserved for AGW deniers, and creationists.

I forget to add, the old chestnut "I'm not a racist - I have plenty of Negro friends!" a favorite of people claiming that they aren't racist.

Do you not understand the sandwich concept? You weight the start and finish heavily, and the fluff in the middle very little. It's a great way to decipher the bafflegabe spouted by many. I try to avoid it myself, but it tends to creep in to racists and sexists statements, such as her saying she wouldn't have a career if it was up to white males. That is the important statement Anyhow - I understand your point. You are a feminist or feminist supporter. All statements that do not support that narrative must be discarded.

Kind of reminds me of the "wedge concept" used by creationists and intelligent design believers. One statement for crowd A, another for crowd B.

Re:Here is your answer

[strikethree]

I don't disagree that there were elements of religion in the book. Regardless of any literary merit, it was fun to read. I have not read it recently, but I am not the typically jaded and cynical adult, so I suspect I would still enjoy it. Many MANY books that I have read fall apart under close examination as an adult. I tend to let the delusions fly so that the story itself can be enjoyed.

Re:Here is your answer

[strikethree]

Creating a feminist agenda out of whole cloth from a story that has no side at all in the supposed Gender War that people keep trying to sustain.

Re:Here is your answer

[strikethree]

The trend is pandering not to people who want inclusivity or equality. The modern trend is toward females being elevated to gender and race based supremacy.

Whoever is doing that shit needs to stop. If there is an all out war between males and females, it is obvious what the conclusion will be. In the meantime, they are making life miserable for millions, possibly billions of people on this planet.

Re:Here is your answer

[AmiMoJo]

Gender... War?

What?

Re:Here is your answer

[strikethree]

Right. You are under the impression that it is a fight for equality, not a fight for supremacy.

Here is real inequality:

Was out with my girlfriend. She wanted to pay for lunch. She paid for lunch. The person at the counter handed the change back to me. Why?

That is inequality.

An example of fake inequality for the cause of supremacy:

There are not many female software engineers; therefore, we need to create more. Spend millions of dollars training and recruiting females. Make laws forcing females into board level positions. There are many more.

How do I say that is supremacy and not equality? Because the females did not want to become software engineers.

Why didn't they want to?

Maybe their father taught them that it is not a female activity. The base cause could be because of gender discrimination but the solutions being proposed are just as bad and do not change the original conditions which caused a lack of female interest in being software engineers or executives.

How about kyword meta data instead stars

[Anonymous Coward]

Id rather viewers had keywords that could be tagged to shows that way we could weed out what we care not to watch...

Truth Hurts

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't handle the truth.

Good grief

[Anonymous Coward]

Listening to the mainstream media, Russians, trolls, and Russian trolls are to blame for every evil in the modern world.

Are the lies getting more obvious, or am I getting better at spotting them?

Sadly

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix has increasingly losing me as a customer. The content is a bit of a roller coaster. For a while, you get some hits then yank...content licenses expire and back down we go. Lately I've found myself more on Amazon and Hulu. Go figure.

Load of Bull

[cloud.pt]

Everybody knows Netflix has hit peak finantial performance from sheer user-base growth alone, so they now have to cut the losses And that's mostly by reducing the number of views popular, expensive content. This is absolutely no different than what Spotify is doing with their Discover system - they will suggest you stuff based on your tastes BUT most of it will be stuff they play for cheap from their catalogue. Or worse, suggest you stuff their catalogue owners want you to listen.

So this is not about trolls of good movies bombing them, or trolls of bad movies praising them - it's about real people giving honest reviews that will obviously troll their business model.

You now get a thumbs up/down by percentage, which can be 1 person or 1 million, so you might be watching The Room because of its 100% rating by the sole positive rating by weird-Tommy. Ever wondered why play counts disappeared on Spotify?

Re:Load of Bull

[luther349]

Netflix knew the ship was sinking. its why they made all the originals. there basically becoming another hbo who did the same thing in the 90s when they figured out showing the same 10 movies in repeat for months on end was not gonna keep the subs.

Orwellian excuses by statist scum...

[Anonymous Coward]

The nations of the earth that do NOT allow free speech use the self-same arguments about 'trolling' that the statist scum use in this forum. The argument boils down to the statement "sheeple are too irresponsible to have the right to communicate their thoughts to other sheeple".

IMDB did the same forums banning- but the real reason, as with Netflix, was corporate. Amazon- the owner of IMDB- allows movie studios to 'sponsor' a movie page and to flood the reviews with fake reviews their PR operations have created. While the forums existed, they were a counter to this- and heavily despised by the industry.

Like all forums, IMDB had a large amount of co-ordinated trolling- especially fan wars, and racist attacks on asian movies, and US movies with significant 'black' content. What the statist scum never point out is that if you have an IQ in double figures at least, it is trivial to skip past the junk posts and locate useful info in the good posts.

IMDB forums had a wealth of information about everything related to movies. All this was lost and 99% of ther actual useful purpose of IMDB to intelligent people vanished when the forums were banned.

Netflix is in the same position- worse since it makes much of its own material- which most customers agree is largely TRASH. Do you think Netflix likes seeing day one trashing of some awful film or TV show it had made for well over standard industry costs. Obviously not. It wants naive sheeple to choose a Netflix product cos of how the official PR pitches that project.

sigh, this is just about the money, as always ...

[Anonymous Coward]

they are rolling in it, but of course, it's never enough for the greedy, so they get rid of anything that costs more than it's worth to them ...

Mods, downvote parent troll.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mods, downvote parent troll.

Re:Mods, downvote parent troll.

[Ol Olsoc]

Mods, downvote parent troll.

That would make no difference on it's truth, and would be the same thing that Kaling et al demand, which is suppression of disagreement, especially as they say - from white males.

Activist groups have long demanded suppression of statements that do not agree with their narrative, and when it is the truth, it needs suppressed even more. The problem of course, is that for whatever short term success it might have, the truth always comes out.

And despite any oppression, the misandryst movies will fail because they just are not good movies.

I can't believe

[QuadEddie]

Most of the reviews were like this: "I can't believe they paid that fat cow Amy Schumer real money to stand up in an outfit made of electrical tape to talk about her nasty vagina for 2 hours."

Re: I can't believe

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a pretty accurate review considering I know exactly what stand up special you're referring to. It was terrible.

Re:I can't believe

[Anonymous Coward]

And then her cousin Chucky Schumer made a phone call and the next Monday it was gone. From henceforth the norm of Netflix was watching the first 5 minutes of bad Netflix Originals for a total of 30 minutes until we fell asleep on the couch.

PS I never would've found Breaking Bad if it weren't for some of the poetic praising reviews by the Netflix viewing community

netflix, you're greenlit & transgender dragons

[geekymachoman]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Or it might be because Netflix content sucks, and they don't want to have 200 movies with shit reviews on them ?
I know that if I had a product that sucks, I would certainly hate to give people ability to comment on it.

Automated interest tracking.

[Anonymous Coward]

Occasionally I see an ad for an item where I can't see it good enough to see what it is. So I click on it and find it is something I don't care about.
Now I'm haunted for weeks with that product in my ad-feed, because I visited the product page....

Same here: You watch "nightmare on elm street" and decide: Never again.... But before you know it your suggestions consist of mostly horror movies..... Hmm.

Re:netflix, you're greenlit & transgender drag

[luther349]

netflicks knew the movie's where going to get ripped off there service. its why they made that massive investment on originals. they whant to be the next hbo where originals are there bred and butter and movies second.

Netflix Endgame

[BrendaEM]

In the end, Netflix will only have one movie that exists in every category.

Let's Be Clear: Why Netflix doesn't WANT User...

[CAOgdin]

...Reviews:

They have their own pathetic and stupid (even for "ostensible" AI) rating system. It goes like this:

"Oh, you LIKED this movie? Here are 254 other movies your SURE TO LIKE, too!!!"

But, of course, none of them are even vaguely interesting to that viewer, because each movie has probably 10 (or more) unique features that the viewer might chose to use to select similar movies: Actors, plot-lines, Director, subject matter, characterization, music, etc, and Netflix has NO IDEA what YOUR interests are (they could probably collect historical data and figure it out, but their interest it not in YOUR satisfaction...just that you pay them each month...so ANYTHING you pick next makes them happy).

Bogus recommendation in the extreme.

now, please remove netflix recommendations

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with Netflix is that they keep recommending the same garbage again and again, forever. There is no way to tell them "Don't show me this pos recommendation, ever again. I will never, ever want to see that garbage."

Instead, the recommendations are 95% polluted with stuff they have tried to sell me before, and finding anything I might actually want to watch is damn nigh impossible among all the stinking detritus.

They don't listen anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they don't.

Trolls! Everybody wants...

[martinfb]

Trolls! Everybody wants to rule the world.

Sorry. Trolls have no place in any society.

Wrinkle in Time

[junkgoof]

I read the book and saw the movie. I thought the movie was fine. Not as good as the book but better than many book to movie transitions. I suspect that as with most novel to screen transitions the balance between making it interesting to those who had read it while not totally losing those who had not read it was tilted toward the reader and that could put people off. I watched it with my daughter and we enjoyed it.

I didn't find that the racial composition of the cast made a major difference to the story. Some stuff was cut, some was changed, some was added but that is necessary with adaptations.

I'm not sure that the actress is the person with the best perspective. She played a role, she did not write or direct. The book certainly had a religious and political point of view and I think the author was OK with the adaptation.

Reviews & Communities are 50/50

[samjonez]

Whether it's Yelp, Forums, or Netflix, the world of reviews and opinions is 50/50. Sometimes it serves a greater good. And sometimes you just get spam or people gaming the system. Its unfortunate the bad ones ruin it for the good ones.