Netflix removed all customer-submitted online reviews from its website on Friday. In July, the streaming platform had announced that it would stop allowing users to post their reviews from the end of the month.
The streaming platform said that it had decided to remove more than a decades’ worth of user reviews due to a steady decline in the usage of the feature. “Netflix customers were able to leave reviews on Netflix.com until mid-2018, when reviews were removed due to declining use,” the company says on its help site under the entry ‘How do I post reviews on Netflix?’ The page also redirects users to its Ratings and Recommendations article.
Netflix has altered its feedback features in the past. It initially allowed people to rate shows on a scale of one to five stars. However, early last year, the streaming service changed the feature to a simple ‘thumbs up/ thumbs down’ option.
A report in Variety suggests that the streaming platform is likely to have removed the feature because “strongly negative reviews, especially of Netflix’s own original programming, may have helped drive down users’ overall perception of the quality of the service”. Some Netflix users might have attempted to “sabotage titles they didn’t like with a coordinated barrage of acrimony”, the report added.
In 2017, for instance, several users who objected to the content of Amy Schumer’s The Leather Special gave the show one-star reviews in a planned campaign.