Gaming Netflix Ratings? 235
Nom du Keyboard writes "Not for the first time, I've noticed a new film that hasn't yet even reached the theaters, yet has hundreds of positive votes and/or reviews recorded on Netflix. This time the movie is Inkheart. For a movie that doesn't even hit the theaters until January 23, it already has 428 votes and a rating of 4.3 (out of 5) on Netflix. Seems more than a bit fraudulent to me. Also, it has a review that doesn't even review the movie, but instead says the books are great, therefore the movie should be too. Does the word 'shills' come to mind? With millions spent to promote a movie, are a few hundred of that going to phony voters? Or have that many people actually seen the film and just can't wait to rush home and log onto Netflix to vote? Just what is Netflix's responsibility here to provide honest ratings?"
Not to disagree with your conspiracy... (Score:5, Interesting)
But it isn't rare for there to be advanced screenings of a movie a week or two in advance of the public release date.
I wonder if we'll ever see movie cinemas with terminals or similar at them that let you rate a movie as you walk out after seeing it.
Not shils, fanboys. (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't have to be a Shil to post reviews before the movie is out, you just have to be a fanboy. The 'I read the books' comment is definitely by a fanboy.
I used to see a lot of this crap on EBGames.com before they got smart and disabled reviews before the games came out. Now it's called 'Preview Buzz'. You see the exact same comments, but they don't get to provide a rating.
Re:Not released? (Score:5, Interesting)
Should that make a significant difference?
Netflix does not own movie theaters either. Yet that doesn't stop people from watching movies there and reviewing DVD movies (often before the DVD release) based on the theater experience.
Between advance screenings, festivals, and people who may have watched it in other countries at some point... a few hundred viewers doesn't sound that implausible.
If anything, the over-eager fan phenomenon (the "books are great, movie is going to rock" review the poster mentions) is the most likely distortion. But that's hardly surprising or suspicious - popular book-sequels tend to demonstrate something like this in Amazon weeks/months before it was released (sometimes positive hype, sometimes negative).
Why would it be different in Netflix? Most likely it is just less obvious in their user interface.
Re:Not released? (Score:5, Interesting)
Who are these foreigners who are so altruistic as to log in to Netflix -- thus far, a US-only service -- to rate a movie and write a review of it wholly for the benefit of people subscribed to a service the reviewers themselves cannot benefit from?
Come to that, can you even enter a rating and/or review without being a subscriber?
How to Reason Intelligently (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't know how people can ever come to any conclusions. It's cases like this (original post and response) that make me question how anybody can reach any sort of authoritative conclusion. You think you've identified something, and something you never thought of blows it away. Maybe this seems trivial in this case, it's easy for Americans to forget about the rest of the world, or, more likely, not realize how different it is and runs on a different schedule, or realize that something (like Netflix) is global. But it seems to me like this kind of shortsightedness is much more diverse and often more inconspicuous than just forgetting about the rest of the world. Maybe that's an indication that people shouldn't hold conclusions with such authority? It points out a fatal flaw in that statement by Sherlock Holmes, something like, "If you've eliminated all other possibilities, all that remains, however improbable, must be the truth." There's no way to can enumerate all other possibilities, let alone eliminate them. "Oh, well, it didn't occur to me that an indestructible micrometeorite would have been landing at this point in time appearing very much like a bullet permeating this guy's skull! Maybe we shouldn't have executed the convict after all."
Re:Not to disagree with your conspiracy... (Score:5, Interesting)
Possibly not fraud (Score:3, Interesting)
While fraud may be a problem, I don't think it is. Pre-screeners get a copy of the films just for these sorts of things.
I know for a fact that if you look for it, you can get "Taken," "Defiance," and other movies on the internet in DVD quality over the internet "for free." I am further certain that members film community and/or MPIAA uploaded the movies to drive up viewership at the box office.
For instance, "The Day The Earth Stood Still" sucked, so the "screening" video is not out there. "Gran Torino" was an excellent movie and did well at the box office, and the screening video *is* out there.
My new criteria for seeing a movie in a theater is looking for the screening video on-line. If it is out there, its probably a good movie because someone put it out there.
Not surprizing (Score:3, Interesting)
Thankfully someone has fixed that, but it just shows how inaccurate internet polls are.
Re:Astroturfing is rife, more common online auctio (Score:4, Interesting)
It's easy to get a high positive ebay score if you have a legit business that doesn't depend on reputation, like selling LED replacement bulbs for cars or something like that. The penalty for failure is low so people will buy from you anyway, and items are cheap so you have high volume and get a high score. The eBay score doesn't really tell you much on their own if they have 1 negative and 2000 positives, and the negative is for a thousand dollar item, and everything else was a buck, either.
Re:Not only that, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes bribing. If it can happen over at amazon, it can certainly happen on other customer review sites.
This is why I typically subtract a star from my reviews. It I think a book or movie is worth 8 stars, I'll rate it 7, so as to counteract the Paid Corporate Employees false positives. (Aside: Why is it that I can't leave 0 stars on amazon or imdb? Some things actually deserve a 0.)
Never attribute to malice what can be explained... (Score:3, Interesting)
...by stupidity.
I think Hanlon's Razor [wikiquote.org] applies here. Many people here on Slashdot like to put on a tinfoil hat and shout "AstroTurfing" for almost anything. I'm harder to convince of that.
I'll put aside what many have pointed out here, that the film in question has already been released in places.
NPR had an interview a month or so ago with David Edelstein, a film critic who happened to be the first to go public with a negative review for Dark Knight [npr.org]. In other words, he was the one responsible for first knocking it down from a 100% rating on metacritic and similar meta-rating sites.
In the interview he said he regretted having been first because of the backlash he received, but that he stood by his rating.
He also went on to point out the deluge of emails he received from angry fans. Many of whom would go on to criticize him at length while prefacing the email with "I haven't actually seen the film yet, but..."
Fanboys are rabid. They defend movies, hardware, software, etc, often sight unseen, because they want their horse to win. Even if they don't actually know what it looks like.
In this case, the movie is based on a book. I don't doubt that many of the votes on NetFlix are folks who have rated the film sight unseen, because they WANT to like it. They're jazzed about it, and they want it to be rated highly.