The Last Jedi's Rotten Tomatoes Score Might Be Bogus

'Star Wars' fan claims he made bot accounts on Facebook to churn out bad rankings
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 20, 2017 8:26 AM CST
The Last Jedi 's Rotten Tomatoes Score Might Be Bogus
This image released by Lucasfilm shows John Boyega as Finn in a scene from 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi.'   (Lucasfilm via AP)

Star Wars: The Last Jedi has racked up plenty of favorable reviews en route to a 93% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. But the film's audience rating, currently 55% after more than 124,000 user reviews, isn't nearly as impressive. It may not be that moviegoers don't like the flick, though. As Quartz reports, a Star Wars fan who operates a Facebook page critical of "Disney's treatment of franchises and its fanboys" claims to have manipulated the audience rating by posting fake reviews. In a Sunday post, the unnamed fan claims to have created bot Facebook accounts that "rigged this score and still keep it dropping." Quartz notes that logging on to Rotten Tomatoes through Facebook bypasses a security measure designed to distinguish bots from real users.

"Look for the accounts there that have The Last Jedi as their only review," the individual says, per Inverse. "That is me." Quartz surveyed some 20 pages of reviews and found "dozens of 0.5 and 1 star reviews came from accounts created in December that have not reviewed any other titles." This was also noted by Polygon, which discovered many reviews attacking the film's "social justice warrior" ideas, strong female characters, and non-white characters. Even so, Rotten Tomatoes says all looks fine on its end. "We have a team of security, network, social and database experts who closely monitor our platforms," a rep tells Quartz. "They haven’t seen any unusual user activity." (More Star Wars stories.)

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