Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes appears to have deleted over 50,000 reviews for Captain Curiosity.

A screenshot taken this morn around 9:30 AM ET shows the picture had over 58,000 user reviews with an Audience Score of 32%

A screenshot of the website taken at around 1:l PM ET shows there are merely but over four,000 user reviews. The deletion of these 50,000 user reviews appears to have boosted Captain Marvel'south user score by a four points to 36%.

Captain Marvel Rotten Tomatoes

Jeremy Conrad of MCU Cosmic believed people were using bots to give Helm Marvel bad reviews.

His thoughts would be echoed by Forbes writer Scott Mendelsohn.

In that location is something to this idea every bit a number of the reviews simply stated "I_am_Robbie_the_synthetic_comment." However, the scores fastened to reviews with that comment varied widely from five stars simply just a one-half star.

Rotten Tomatoes Captain Marvel bot comments

Rotten Tomatoes Captain Marvel bot comments

Rotten Tomatoes recently radically altered their website after a number of false and misleading reports from a number of entertainment websites that claimed people were "review bombing" Captain Marvel when in fact they were only marker whether or not they were interested in seeing the film. They were non actually reviewing the movie, and could not review the movie at the time because the film was non in theaters.

Rotten Tomatoes explained the conclusion in a weblog post:

"Over the past eighteen months, we've made a number of updates at Rotten Tomatoes, all in an endeavor to streamline the site and provide users with a more enriched experience. These updates include the launch of a new visual identity (you don'thatethe ruby anymore, right?); the cosmos of new original editorial, video, and social content (check u.s.a. out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram); and a revamped Tomatometer critics criteria that improve reflects the current media landscape, increases inclusion, and more fully serves the global entertainment audience."

They would go along:

"Starting this calendar week, Rotten Tomatoes volition launch the starting time of several phases of updates that volition refresh and modernize our Audience Rating System. We're doing it to more accurately and authentically stand for the voice of fans, while protecting our data and public forums from bad actors.

As of February 25, we will no longer show the 'Desire to See' percentage score for a flick during its pre-release period. Why you lot might inquire?  We've found that the 'Want to See' percentage score is often times confused with the 'Audience Score' percentage number. (The 'Audience Score' percentage, for those who haven't been following, is the percentage of all users who have rated the moving-picture show or Tv bear witness positively – that is, given it a star rating of 3.5 or higher – and is only shown once the movie or Goggle box show is released.)"

They also announced they were disabling commenting on movies before they release to theaters.

"What else are we doing? We are disabling the annotate part prior to a film'south release date. Unfortunately, we take seen an uptick in non-constructive input, sometimes bordering on trolling, which nosotros believe is a disservice to our general readership. We take decided that turning off this feature for now is the best grade of action. Don't worry though, fans will still get to have their say: Once a movie is released, audiences tin leave a user rating and comments every bit they ever have.

Last but not least, you will notice we are making some layout changes to the site. Through our research department we have learned that our users would prefer a cleaner, less chaotic, presentation of the Tomatometer and Audience Score. Don't worry, the information and data are still there (hope!)."

Following their announcement, the website was accused of shilling for the motion picture studios.

However, there were also calls for Rotten Tomatoes to take downwardly Audience Scores altogether. SyFy Wire'due south Editor-in-Chief Adam Swiderski stated:

I think they should get rid of fans review entirely. It's not a right. They run a website. They run a business. Critic reviews are critic reviews and that's fine. And listen this isn't me proverb fans can't have an opinion. But this is a tool. It's obviously existence abused more information technology is being used constructively especially around particular films that politically rub some people the wrong fashion for certain reasons. It's why we can't have a overnice thing. Information technology would exist nice if people used it the mode information technology's supposed to be used, but no one is. And so screw it, farewell.

His statement echoes Captain Marvel role player Samuel L. Jackson's own thoughts on the matter:

"The mere fact that you requite a vox or a platform to people who commonly don't accept a platform is part of the problem. You tin can have an opinion that you don't really have to be responsible for because nobody's going to see y'all, nobody's going to challenge you on information technology and if you want to bring somebody down or only ruin somebody's day, you lot can say anything. Everybody doesn't want to be uplifting and that'southward pretty much what that problem is."

What exercise y'all think about Rotten Tomatoes taking downwards these reviews? Do yous think a lot of these were disingenuous reviews created by bots? Or practice you think Rotten Tomatoes had more nefarious reasons for removing the reviews?