The Reason Netflix Is Ditching User Reviews

Users dont seem to care as much any more and there are mathematically superior means of gauging their tastes. JL

Brian Heater reports in Tech Crunch:

Netflix has been weaning users off of the crowdsourced rating system for a while. The site dumped the five-star rating system in favor of the more straight forward thumbs up/down, in an attempt to offer a more personalized recommendation system.“A thumbs-down lets us know you aren’t interested in watching that title. Using thumbs helps us learn even more about your unique tastes so we can do a better job suggesting stories we think you’ll love.”

Once a mainstay of the service, Netflix’s user reviews are going away. The movie streaming giant has shifted away from the feature over the last few years, and by the end of the summer, they’ll be gone from the site altogether.

If you still got something to get off your chest about the new season of Kimmy Schmidt, you’ll still be able to do so through the end of the month. It won’t do much good, however — by the middle of August, no one will actually be able to read the thing.

A spokesperson for the company acknowledged as much in an email this week, stating, “We have notified members who have used the feature recently.”

Netflix has been weaning users off of the crowdsourced rating system for a while now, of course. Back in April of last year, the site dumped the familiar five-star rating system in favor of the more straight forward thumbs up/down, in an attempt to offer a more personalized recommendation system.

“A thumbs-down lets us know you aren’t interested in watching that title and we should stop suggesting it to you,” Netflix wrote at the time. “You can still search for it, but we’ve heard what you were trying to tell us — you aren’t a fan — and it will no longer show up on your homepage. In either case, using thumbs helps us learn even more about your unique tastes so we can do a better job suggesting stories we think you’ll love.”

The review system has only been available via the desktop version of the service — and from most accounts, it’s been fairly under used of late. Once it’s gone, however, the thumbs up/down will remain in tact. If you still need to world to know what you thought about that powerful new Hannah Gadsby standup special, on the other hand, that’s what social media is for, I guess.