Amazon Studios boss Jennifer Salke confirmed what many critics suspected that Amazon was censoring reviews that the company disagreed with.
In a giant damage control article in The Hollywood Reporter, Salke confirmed the gigantic corporation was using all of its power to censor opinions they disagreed with.
She told the outlet that she saw the criticism, “We all saw it coming, there were no surprises.”
“Having insight into our global audience, we also have insight into the darker sides of how people can manipulate reviews and have other points of view that we wouldn’t support,” she revealed.
This confirmation comes in the wake of Amazon announcing they were updating their review system on Prime Video with the premiere of the first episode of the show.
Variety reported the company implemented a “new 72-hour delay for all user reviews posted to Prime Video.”
Not only did they indicate they were delaying reviews, but they would also be evaluating each review for authenticity. Variety’s Adam B. Vary and Jennifer Maas explained, “Each critique is then evaluated to determine whether it’s genuine or a forgery created by a bot, troll or other breed of digital goblin.”
Variety went on to claim Prime Video’s system is working by pointing to A League of Their Own and the fact the show had an average of 4.3 out of 5 stars with 80% of users giving it five stars while only 14% gave it one stars.
Anyone with any sense of critical thinking ability would be appalled at writing such words. It’s rather clear that Prime Video is favoring reviews that praise their own shows rather than those that are critical.
Not only can one deduce this by the simple observation that there are 80% 5 star reviews compared to only 14% one star reviews, but YouTuber Ryan Kinel took a look at Prime Video’s review system for The Rings of Power and observed that they didn’t allow reviews for the show to populate on Prime Video until after the show had been on the platform for over a week.
He then pointed out, “Five stars with two approved reviews for Rings of Power. Seems normal, right? Seems pretty normal with it being #1 in the United States right now that it would have two five star reviews.”
“Now, of course, if we scroll down a little bit, here, we can see it’s much more than just two five star reviews. Right now I think they are showing something like 44 reviews, which is still laughable. It’s laughable because these are going all the way back to September 2nd, September 5th. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of reviews out there for this thing. But they are so carefully controlling and manipulating this to try and manage the backlash to try and do the damage control. It’s so f***ing disingenuous,” he asserted.
Before they began censoring the reviews, Prime Video was also working with YouTube to delete negative comments on the various trailers and promotional videos for the show.
YouTuber Disparu highlighted this when he examined a video titled “The Earth Needs More Elf Fans.” He notes at one point in time the video had 60,969 views with 506 comments.
Then when the video has 309,290 views it only has 287 comments. Disparu then asserts, “If you just do the ratio of views to views and comments to comments you would have expected 2,567 comments not 287. Which means that if you assume the same comment velocity over time they’ve deleted 89% of all comments that anyone made.”
What do you make of Salke confirming the censorship because she and Amazon simply disagree with the point of view?