Netflix Completes Their Purge Of User Reviews From Its Website

There are many ways to gauge whether or not a product, service, TV show, or movie is good. For example there is the star rating, and then there are also user-submitted reviews where customers can leave behind more detailed reasons as to why they might like or dislike a certain product or service.

Netflix used to have user reviews of shows on its website, but as you might have heard, last month the company announced that they would be doing away with it, and sure enough that has happened. Netflix has completely purged its website of user reviews which means that if you wanted to read or submit a review, you would no longer be able to.

As to why Netflix has decided to purge the reviews, a help page cites the decline in usage as a reason.  “Netflix customers were able to leave reviews on Netflix.com until mid-2018, when reviews were removed due to declining use.” According to Variety’s report, it has been speculated that removing reviews would help prevent users from sabotaging shows with coordinated negative reviews (like we sometimes see on Yelp).

However Netflix claims that user reviews do not have an effect on content recommendations made by their algorithm. Netflix has been changing the way users review shows, where in the past users could give shows a star rating, which later changed to a thumbs up or down.

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: Entertainment, Netflix