Amazon Halts User Reviews to Blunt ‘Rings of Power’ Backlash. By Alana Mastrangelo.
Many independent reviews of the politically-correct and hugely expensive prequel to Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings have been unkind, harsh even — cliched, derivative, boring, and obnoxiously PC. Amazon spent nearly US$1 billion making The Rings of Power.
Amazon has temporarily shut off user reviews for The Rings of Power on Prime Video, claiming to take this action so it can filter out “trolls” leaving negative comments about the new series. …
The purpose for doing this, the company says, is to determine whether or not the review is genuine or if it is a comment coming from what is known as a “bot.”
Others, however, might look at this explanation with suspicion, as it can appear that Amazon is using delays as a means for filtering out negative reviews or complaints about the new woke series. …
Amazon’s retail ecosystem relies heavily on user reviews, so it was previously unthinkable for the tech giant to follow in the footsteps of Netflix, which abandoned its user reviews feature entirely after an Amy Schumer special was widely panned by viewers. However, this recent move to protect The Rings of Power opens the door for Amazon to take just as drastic of a move to silence its own customers.
Amazon can buy and intimidate the critics, but not the viewers:
On Rotten Tomatoes, The Rings of Power received an 84 percent rating from the professional critics and a 39 percent rating from user-submitted reviews.
Steve Sailer has a brilliant comment:
If you are a giant global corporation like Amazon, it’s a difficult conundrum that the world loves northern European artistry, but also is instructed to resent northern Europeans.
Amazon is now claiming all the negative reviews, in fact, came from one user with the screen name “peterj4cks0n1337”.
