If you were hoping to tell everyone your opinions on all five Air Bud movies, you’ll no longer be able to do so on Netflix, as they’ve deleted more than a decade’s worth of user reviews and are no longer accepting user reviews on the streaming site. Testing ads between episodes wasn’t the only potentially-frustrating change Netflix rolled out recently. Over the weekend, all user reviews disappeared from the website (they were never displayed on mobile and TV apps to begin with), and Netflix’s help page was updated to read, “Netflix customers were able to leave reviews on Netflix.com until mid-2018, when reviews were removed due to declining use.”
Netflix stopped accepting new reviews on July 30th, telling customers that they would be doing away with the feature by mid-August. Although Netflix is citing “declining use” of reviews among viewers (and the reviews were never used in Netflix’s recommendation algorithm, according to a company rep), there will likely be speculation about other reasons for the change. Netflix likely didn’t enjoy receiving any bad reviews on their original series and original movies, especially not when they’ve finally ended HBO’s streak for the most Emmy nominations this year. They may also welcome getting rid of the need to monitor the content of reviews and stave off coordinated trolling attacks, like the spate of one-star ratings given to Amy Schumer’s Netflix-exclusive comedy special last year, reportedly spearheaded by Reddit’s r/The_Donald forum. Netflix replaced its five-star rating system with a thumbs-up/thumbs-down rating system shortly afterward, leaving people to guess if the move was in response to trolling.
With ten years of user reviews no longer available at Netflix, we’ll just have to share our theories about the Air Bud extended universe in the old-fashioned way, by screaming at strangers on Twitter.
(Via Variety)
