No More Stars! Netflix is Changing Its Ratings System

The way that we Netflix is about to get simpler.

Netflix announced today that their instant streaming service is going to change the way that consumers rate their movies, from an old-fashioned 0-5 “star system” to the “thumbs up/thumbs down” system that was popularized by critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. So instead of endlessly debating whether Iron Fist deserves one star or two, all you have to do is admit to yourself that it wasn’t very good and vote “thumbs down” like a Roman emperor at the gladiator arena.

It’s a simple enough change, but Netflix felt the need to make a whole announcement video about it anyway. It’s called “Introducing Thumbs,” as if anyone was completely unfamiliar with the concept, and it spends a lot of its time apologizing for making the star system so confusing in the first place, clarifying that they were never intended to represent a film or tv show’s popularity (which you would probably assume from a glance), and instead were used to reflect how likely they thought individual consumers were to like each piece of content, based on their own rankings and viewing habits.

Netflix compares their new system to “dating applications,” which also reduce complex emotional and intellectual responses to simplistic binary equations… for better and worse). But the end result does at least seem to come across more clearly in the interface. Instead of a star rating which means something different for Netflix than it does coming from every film critic you’ve ever read, the service instead offers a “Match Percentage,” which predicts how likely they think you are to enjoy the movie or show.

So if you turned on Netflix today and noticed the change, that’s what happened. They’re trying to fix a system that sometimes didn’t work the way they wanted it to, and sometimes offered unusual recommendations and star ratings. Now I guess all we have to do is wait a couple of days for somebody online to figure out why this thumbs system doesn’t work either.

Ten Movies That Make Math Look Badass:

Top Photo: TriStar Pictures

William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and Canceled Too Soon, and watch him on the weekly YouTube series What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.