Rotten Tomatoes tries to combat trolls with audience rating changes - TechCrunch

Rotten Tomatoes is making a couple of changes designed to prevent trolls from attacking films before they’re even released.

The review aggregator (owned by Fandango) recently announced that it will no longer allow users to post comments about a movie before the movie actually comes out.

This seems like a no-brainer, and it comes less than two weeks before the release of “Captain Marvel” — the latest blockbuster film to be targeted by online commenters who are apparently upset that movies no longer focus exclusively on white male heroes. (Despite this, “Captain Marvel” looks like it’s going to be a big hit for Marvel and Disney.)

“Unfortunately, we have seen an uptick in non-constructive input, sometimes bordering on trolling, which we believe is a disservice to our general readership,” the site says. “We have decided that turning off this feature for now is the best course of action.”

The site also says it’s no longer displaying a “Want to See” score for a movie, supposedly because it was getting confused for the “Audience Score” — which, again, is only displayed after a movie has been released.

“Don’t worry,” Rotten Tomatoes says, “fans will still get to have their say” once the movie is out. So if a bunch of reactionary idiots still think this is the best venue for their rants about SJWs, they’ll get their opportunity — but this will make it a little harder for them to affect the buzz around a film before it comes out.

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