Pausing Reviews to Stop Review Bombing
It’s a new era every week it seems, but something that doesn’t seem to be changing is SPEED, BABY! If something happens - breaking news, a movie debut, a game release - the takes must be hot, fast, and fierce. Baby.
The reactions are fast, but it’s the speed of their spread that matters, too. The internet’s speed now means that a movie might be doomed before it even opens, purely due to the pace of bad press and early reviews.
But you know and we know- not every review is worth the time it takes to read it. Sometimes they’re biased, sometimes they’re completely bogus and written by bots. We humans may be fast online, but bots and trolls - not needing time to breath our human air or moisturize our human skin - can post negative reviews rapidly, dousing the dreams of filmmakers and game developers the world round.
Obviously the big houses of reviews have tools at work - which they constantly refine - to combat fake reviews, but how do you surmount sheer volume and speed?
Do the Thing in the Title: Pause Reviews
Yes! You nailed it!
Recently both the Google Play Store and Amazon have tapped the brakes on reviews in order to stop the tide of review bombs (those reviews that are there to only drag a film/game/product/business down).
On the Google Play Store, Google has now implemented a 24-hour buffer period before user-submitted reviews are made public. During this period, the app developers ARE able to see and interact with the review, and Google’s tools will inspect it to ensure it is genuine.
According to Google, a fake or spam review is an inaccurate review or one review that has been posted multiple times. It also considers posting the same review under multiple accounts as being categorized as fake or spam. Finally, it states that misrepresenting one’s identity or connections are also not acceptable. (xda-developers.com)
Over on Amazon Prime, the new buffer period can stretch up to three days before a posted review is made public. This is in response to a spate of negative reviews received by The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which has “earned” 17,500 one star ratings on IMDB. I emphasize ratings because that means actual reviews weren’t written, just star ratings given (something I assume it’s easier to do en masse, if you were the type of person who wanted to do that).
Amazon’s buffer, similar to Google’s, allows them to verify that reviews are genuine and not “anti-woke trolls.” One additional tool Amazon is employing is preventing a user from reviewing LOTR:ROP is that they cannot leave a review (on Amazon Prime) until they watch an episode (on Amazon Prime).
So is all this good?
I’d say yes. Whether it’s the news or reviews, we should be looking for accuracy instead of biases, and facts over opinions. As shoppers turn to the internet more and more, and reviews carrying more weight than ever, we need to be able to trust them. If getting that right means we have to wait a few days before our own precious reviews are made public, then so be it. It’s due diligence by Amazon, Google, and all the rest.
