Amazon tries to stop The Rings of Power trolls with 3-day review delay

[midian182]

In context: Users posting reviews on Amazon Prime Video will have to wait 72 hours for them to appear as the company looks to combat the problem of review bombing. The policy was introduced on August 12 but has come under the spotlight recently following the debut of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which has received a number of negative reviews over its diverse cast playing the roles of elves, dwarfs, and other Middle-earth races.

Amazon quietly introduced the 3-day review delay around the time it launched its reboot of A League of Their Own, which was also review bombed. The Rings of Power has been experiencing something similar: on Rotten Tomatoes, it has an 84% rating from critics and a 37% from user-submitted reviews.

Critics and consumers having opposing views on the quality of a movie or show is certainly nothing new—Netflix's Don't Look Up is a good example of that—and some site users complain about The Rings of Power's story and acting, but there are plenty of criticisms over the casting and how it doesn't "honor Tolkien's vision."

Amazon told Variety the 72-hour period would be used to confirm that a view comes from a genuine user and not from a bot or a troll (the online version). It appears to be working as A League of Their Own has a 4.3 out of 5-star rating on Prime Video.

Amazon says the two launch episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power attracted 25 million worldwide viewers in its first 24 hours, making it Prime Video's biggest premiere ever. The company will doubtlessly be pleased by the figures, given that it spent $465 million on the first season of the show.

Other review sites have various policies for mitigating review bombings. Metacritic stopped allowing reviews to be posted within the first 36 hours of a game's release, likely due to story details about The Last of Us Part 2 leaking before it arrived, while Rotten Tomatoes doesn't allow reviews of movies that haven't been released.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/95868-amazon-tries-stop-rings-power-trolls-3-day.html

 

[Farkinell]

There are definitely people out there (trolls) who will hate on a production no matter what its merits simply because they have an idealogical issue with one thing or another, but at what point does the industry accept some shows are not being “review bombed”, they just suck and deserve negative reviews?

This has happened many times before (looking at you Ghostbusters 2016) where poor quality show has been met with an avalanche of negative reception. Instead of admitting they made a terrible product the producers or studio just blamed the fans and attached lazy labels to them try to explain why no one liked it and why they should be allowed to curl another one out without learning any lessons at all.

 

[VitalyT]

Amazon has figured out the best way to avoid negative reviews - not to ask for reviews. The rest - you can buy or fake.

He who cannot take criticism is there to suck in perpetuity.

 

[Trapped Nowhere]

There are definitely people out there (trolls) who will hate on a production no matter what its merits simply because they have an idealogical issue with one thing or another, but at what point does the industry accept some shows are not being “review bombed”, they just suck and deserve negative reviews?

This has happened many times before (looking at you Ghostbusters 2016) where poor quality show has been met with an avalanche of negative reception. Instead of admitting they made a terrible product the producers or studio just blamed the fans and attached lazy labels to them try to explain why no one liked it and why they should be allowed to curl another one out without learning any lessons at all.

it's almost as if the obvious review bombing bandwagon is making the actual legitimate criticism look bad. it's not really a secret and folks are literally memeing about bringing it down more intentionally. it's pretty easy to spot the patterns, especially when you follow those type of accounts and watch their antics and outreach firsthand

 

[m4a4]

Yeahhhh... if they had a show that was actually good and faithful, they wouldn't have to worry about underhanded tactics to protect their investment.

And considering it's a show (not a movie), why bother? You want retention.
Whether or not you get some more "clueless" people to watch the first episode or 2, they'll decide on how soulless the show is on their own and stop watching anyways. And the PR of preventing negative reviews at launch will just have less people want to deal with your service anyways...

 

[Prosercunus]

Bought and Paid for reviews are legit. 10/10 reviews are legit...

But 1/10 reviews? Bigot, Incel, etc etc

 

[McMurdeR]

Bought and Paid for reviews are legit. 10/10 reviews are legit...

But 1/10 reviews? Bigot, Incel, etc etc

In fairness everything Left of Mussolini seems to be 1/10 "woke trash" these days!

 

[Prosercunus]

In fairness everything Left of Mussolini seems to be 1/10 "woke trash" these days!

It's not even about being "woke trash" It's about having trash writing. Great female characters with feminine power angles have exsisted as far back as the 60's and were actually written well in the 80's and even 90's. Other representation should be behind good writing, if anything it's just diminishing toward groups they claim to want to represent.

 

[dangh]

I really couldn't care less about colours and stuff. But I didn't like any movie about middleearth, and this series have same issue: it's just bad movie, and do not give any vibe you get from books. I'm fine with black, yellow, blue elves or dwarves, if the story would make sense.
It does not.

 

[Pr13st]

Maybe they should take a leaf from House of the Dragon and actually do a quality show?

At first I thought RoP was getting review bombed by racists or Tolkien purists, after watching the first two episodes I realised that the show is all flash and no substance; some of the worst dialogues I've seen in recent years, paired with an entirely unlikable cast and of course the writers' lack of experience are all glaring.

At least it looks nice.

 

[McMurdeR]

It's not even about being "woke trash" It's about having trash writing. Great female characters with feminine power angles have exsisted as far back as the 60's and were actually written well in the 80's and even 90's. Other representation should be behind good writing, if anything it's just diminishing toward groups they claim to want to represent.

Seriously? Are we not talking about Tolkien here - a huge arc in LOTR centres around the Eowyn character which explores and celebrates exactly the theme of women taking on masculine power angles!

And here's the unbelievable irony. If Tolkien published his work today, he wouldn't have been spared the review bombs in today's prevailing atmosphere..

 

[McMurdeR]

Maybe they should take a leaf from House of the Dragon and actually do a quality show?

At first I thought RoP was getting review bombed by racists or Tolkien purists, after watching the first two episodes I realised that the show is all flash and no substance; some of the worst dialogues I've seen in recent years, paired with an entirely unlikable cast and of course the writers' lack of experience are all glaring.

At least it looks nice.

I must admit I think HotD has had a better start, but in fairness to TRoP, it's not a bad show either..

 

[Mister_K]

Yeahhhh... if they had a show that was actually good and faithful, they wouldn't have to worry about underhanded tactics to protect their investment.

And considering it's a show (not a movie), why bother? You want retention.
Whether or not you get some more "clueless" people to watch the first episode or 2, they'll decide on how soulless the show is on their own and stop watching anyways. And the PR of preventing negative reviews at launch will just have less people want to deal with your service anyways...

Reacher was great. This is okaish.

 

[hahahanoobs]

The public are drunk with power after a few reversals go their way. They won't stop unless stopped.

The reigns need to be pulled. They can speak with their wallets instead of their whiny mouths. I swear the whole world has gone soft.

/end rant

 

[Bluescreendeath]

Amazon has figured out the best way to avoid negative reviews - not to ask for reviews. The rest - you can buy or fake.

He who cannot take criticism is there to suck forever.

It would be fine if those reviews were from people who actually saw the show and could provide legitimate criticism. The problem with review bombing and review trolls is a lot of those reviews comes from people who post almost immediately upon the show's or game's release and thus never actually watched or played the media before reviewing it.

That is just as bad for accurately evaluating a media as paying for fake reviews.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

Bought and Paid for reviews are legit. 10/10 reviews are legit...
But 1/10 reviews? Bigot, Incel, etc etc

Paid reviews and review bombers who didn't even watch/play the media are both garbage who make it harder for real world consumers to accurately gauge whether they should watch/play a media.

In fairness everything Left of Mussolini seems to be 1/10 "woke trash" these days!

Agreed. There is actual legitimate woke trash, and then there is a fringe, rabid anti-woke crowd who think anything with too many minorities or too many women in it is woke trash.

For example, that popular "anti-woke" Youtuber Steven Crowder had a video where he and his buddies trashed the Shang Chi movie for being "woke".... presumably because there were a lot of Asian people in the movie and the movie centered around East Asian cultural elements - which is in line with the source material. He also claimed the movie was trying to suck up to China...even though China actually banned the movie from being released in China. I'm pretty sure most people don't consider that movie to be woke as it got great audience reviews and basically had little to no politics in it.
The funny and sad thing is the people in his video even admitted to not actually watching the movie before trashing on it.

 

[fps4ever]

I really couldn't care less about colours and stuff. But I didn't like any movie about middleearth, and this series have same issue: it's just bad movie, and do not give any vibe you get from books. I'm fine with black, yellow, blue elves or dwarves, if the story would make sense.
It does not.

I watched the first two episodes. Regardless of whoever thinks its woke or not its bad writing and some bad acting. I mean wow. I hope the episodes get better but hard to fix the acting.

 

[Dr Roboto]

How many of you actually let the reviews decide if you watch something for a show of this scale? I look at reviews more for things I have not heard of, but something on the scale of Rings of Power I am watching no matter what the reviews are. Review trolls suck, but in my experience good shows always shine through.

As for RoP, if it actually has a low review score maybe it is because the show is not very good. I really liked all of the LoR and Hobbit movies. I have fallen asleep 3 times now watching this RoP series and I am only half way through the second episode. If it was actually good, then maybe people would not notice or care about the "diverse" cast issue.

 

[George Keech]

I sware 99% of shows on prime have 4.5 stars

 

[paul1122]

And then there are people on here who are pulling for a giant money eating monster like Amawhat to have a huge hit because of some ideology while they sell you a 1/5th scale chair and pay their employees nothing to work like slaves.
Go Giant monster! Win!

 

[brucek]

It's not like there aren't dozens of other places to find tv & movie reviews.

I'm not a fan of censorship but actually I would find it convenient if all the "reviews" that were primary single-issue rants about a tangentially related topic would just result in a single summary of the issue on the main page with an option to see them all the individual rants if desired, or otherwise to view just the regular reviews.

 

[kiwigraeme]

I wait for the reviews to build up - then look at the spread - ignore 1 and 10 spike lines .

I really don't have much time for butthurt fans - the latest Teen Titans Go they review bombed that .
I watched that Resident Evil ( never played game ) on Netflex - yeah older selfish sister was annoying as hell - but I would of rated it a 7 - was curious as why review bombed - manly butthurt RE fans - picking holes in story - I can pick 100s of holesin any zombie type series .
I hated The Incredibles 2 - that was dreadful woke stuff - Mr Incredible suddenly didn't know how to be a father unlike first movie - and the same lame joke repeated over and over .

Same as Amazon reviews - the best info is in the 2 to 4 reviews

Don't have prime as a kiwi no free shipping so less useful - if bad writing - then that would be inexcusable for such a producton . Watch a movie like "Some like it hot" - the dialogue is sublime - film stock was expensive - you need to get it tight - Don't know if the use drama actors in hollywood to tighten script way before shooting

 

[toooooot]

They also dont allow low reviews on imdb. I am starting to hate Jeff.

 

[VaRmeNsI]

Go woke go broke

 

[Red34jfp]

In fairness everything Left of Mussolini seems to be 1/10 "woke trash" these days!

Actually for a lot of people everything on the right of Roy L Brooks on racism is at least "semi-fascist". The original Game of Thrones for instance featured a number of black and browns actors, it still wasn't enough to save it from the accusation of lacking in diversity (and indeed this resulted in House of the Dragon belatedly joining the woke bandwagon now). Apparently if you don't feature at least one major character portrayed by a black actor your work is racist and probably (semi)fascist.