In context: Users posting reviews on Amazon Prime Video will have to wait 72 hours for them to appear as the company looks to combat the problem of review bombing. The policy was introduced on August 12 but has come under the spotlight recently following the debut of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which has received a number of negative reviews over its diverse cast playing the roles of elves, dwarfs, and other Middle-earth races.
Amazon quietly introduced the 3-day review delay around the time it launched its reboot of A League of Their Own, which was also review bombed. The Rings of Power has been experiencing something similar: on Rotten Tomatoes, it has an 84% rating from critics and a 37% from user-submitted reviews.
Critics and consumers having opposing views on the quality of a movie or show is certainly nothing new—Netflix’s Don’t Look Up is a good example of that—and some site users complain about The Rings of Power’s story and acting, but there are plenty of criticisms over the casting and how it doesn’t “honor Tolkien’s vision.”
Amazon told Variety the 72-hour period would be used to confirm that a view comes from a genuine user and not from a bot or a troll (the online version). It appears to be working as A League of Their Own has a 4.3 out of 5-star rating on Prime Video.
Amazon says the two launch episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power attracted 25 million worldwide viewers in its first 24 hours, making it Prime Video’s biggest premiere ever. The company will doubtlessly be pleased by the figures, given that it spent $465 million on the first season of the show.
Other review sites have various policies for mitigating review bombings. Metacritic stopped allowing reviews to be posted within the first 36 hours of a game’s release, likely due to story details about The Last of Us Part 2 leaking before it arrived, while Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t allow reviews of movies that haven’t been released.