Rotten Tomatoes Changes Rating System to Combat Trolls
Rotten Tomatoes is changing parts of its rating system in an effort to combat online trolls.
In order to “modernize its audience rating system through a series of product enhancements,” the site said it will now ban the user reviews and comments prior to a movie’s theatrical release.
The latest victim of this mass targeting was "Captain Marvel," which opens in theaters March 8.
Negative pre-release buzz on Rotten Tomatoes has been a problem for quite a few movies over the years, notably the all-female reboot of "Ghostbusters" and last year's biggest hit (and Oscar nominee) "Black Panther."
"Captain Marvel" was experiencing the same thing, with its Audience Score falling to 40 percent despite the fact that almost nobody (aside from select critics and industry members) have seen it.
In an editorial, the site explained, "We are disabling the comment function prior to a movie’s release date. Unfortunately, we have seen an uptick in non-constructive input, sometimes bordering on trolling, which we believe is a disservice to our general readership."
Read the full list of changes at Rotten Tomatoes here.