WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.240 --> 00:00:01.440
- [Narrator] This is "Future Tech"

2
00:00:01.440 --> 00:00:03.810
where each week we
discuss the good, the bad,

3
00:00:03.810 --> 00:00:08.160
and the ugly of where tech
is headed in 2023 and beyond.

4
00:00:08.160 --> 00:00:11.130
- Critics and bots came down
hard on "The Little Mermaid,"

5
00:00:11.130 --> 00:00:13.200
and review sites are taking notice.

6
00:00:13.200 --> 00:00:15.420
Blake Montgomery joins
us now more to discuss.

7
00:00:15.420 --> 00:00:17.280
And Blake, what are we seeing?

8
00:00:17.280 --> 00:00:20.160
- We're seeing masses of
people give one star reviews

9
00:00:20.160 --> 00:00:24.180
to "The Little Mermaid," mostly
off of the backs of animus

10
00:00:24.180 --> 00:00:26.700
towards Halle Bailey, who's
cast as the lead, Ariel.

11
00:00:26.700 --> 00:00:28.440
And ever since the
announcement of her casting,

12
00:00:28.440 --> 00:00:31.290
there's been a lot of racist
backlash targeting her,

13
00:00:31.290 --> 00:00:32.520
the movie, Disney.

14
00:00:32.520 --> 00:00:34.470
So this is the latest version of that.

15
00:00:34.470 --> 00:00:35.310
It's been ongoing.

16
00:00:35.310 --> 00:00:37.470
I mean, we heard about
her casting a year ago,

17
00:00:37.470 --> 00:00:39.180
two years ago.

18
00:00:39.180 --> 00:00:41.040
- Yeah, people love
something to get upset about.

19
00:00:41.040 --> 00:00:44.160
So, this is the Disney live
action remake, of course.

20
00:00:44.160 --> 00:00:48.060
And some of the one star
reviews I believe were

21
00:00:48.060 --> 00:00:50.940
from people who actually
have racist views,

22
00:00:50.940 --> 00:00:53.970
and then some I guess it
was bots that were behind

23
00:00:53.970 --> 00:00:54.803
some of the-

24
00:00:54.803 --> 00:00:57.480
- Yeah, IMDB specifically,

25
00:00:57.480 --> 00:01:00.000
which saw the bulk of
this kind of backlash,

26
00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:03.300
said that there are 32,000
reviews of the film itself

27
00:01:03.300 --> 00:01:06.330
and 13,000 of them are one star.

28
00:01:06.330 --> 00:01:09.900
And it's a coordinated
activity, what did it call it?

29
00:01:09.900 --> 00:01:11.880
A suspicious voting activity.

30
00:01:11.880 --> 00:01:14.370
In Europe especially, a lot of the bots

31
00:01:14.370 --> 00:01:17.010
were using the same
language to leave a review.

32
00:01:17.010 --> 00:01:20.130
A lot of them used specific
phrases that could be flagged.

33
00:01:20.130 --> 00:01:21.930
And so what IMDB is doing is it's, like,

34
00:01:21.930 --> 00:01:26.100
changing its voting system
to preserve the authenticity

35
00:01:26.100 --> 00:01:28.110
and the veracity of its reviews.

36
00:01:28.110 --> 00:01:32.100
It's gonna be weighing
the one star reviews less

37
00:01:32.100 --> 00:01:35.790
than the, like, higher star
reviews because of this,

38
00:01:35.790 --> 00:01:38.756
and present, like, a weighted
average to viewers, basically.

39
00:01:38.756 --> 00:01:39.589
- All right.

40
00:01:39.589 --> 00:01:42.720
Well, so one of our coworkers
already saw it twice,

41
00:01:42.720 --> 00:01:45.870
so it can't be a one star review.

42
00:01:45.870 --> 00:01:48.060
You know, we have seen this before though,

43
00:01:48.060 --> 00:01:51.090
you know, backlash over
the casting of a character.

44
00:01:51.090 --> 00:01:54.068
We just saw that with, I
believe it was Netflix,

45
00:01:54.068 --> 00:01:55.710
"Queen Cleopatra."

46
00:01:55.710 --> 00:01:57.390
- That's happened before with Cleopatra,

47
00:01:57.390 --> 00:02:00.240
and there's a lot of kind
of discourse about like,

48
00:02:00.240 --> 00:02:01.380
was Cleopatra African?

49
00:02:01.380 --> 00:02:02.213
Was she Egyptian?

50
00:02:02.213 --> 00:02:03.060
Are they the same?

51
00:02:03.060 --> 00:02:05.700
Like, who should play that person?

52
00:02:05.700 --> 00:02:07.340
Where was she originally from?

53
00:02:07.340 --> 00:02:08.430
That sort of thing.

54
00:02:08.430 --> 00:02:10.980
And so, the casting ends up entwined

55
00:02:10.980 --> 00:02:13.080
in this, like, very complicated debate.

56
00:02:13.080 --> 00:02:14.010
- Right.

57
00:02:14.010 --> 00:02:15.480
So, I wanna ask though,

58
00:02:15.480 --> 00:02:17.010
when it comes to reviews
in general, I mean,

59
00:02:17.010 --> 00:02:21.030
do you consider them before
deciding to watch something?

60
00:02:21.030 --> 00:02:25.830
- If I see a review average
that's so low or so high,

61
00:02:25.830 --> 00:02:27.300
I do pause a little bit.

62
00:02:27.300 --> 00:02:28.950
If it's in the middle,
it's sort of like, okay,

63
00:02:28.950 --> 00:02:31.593
there's mixed opinion on
the internet, so what?

64
00:02:32.520 --> 00:02:34.980
But if it's so, so, so low,

65
00:02:34.980 --> 00:02:36.660
like what happened with
"The Little Mermaid,"

66
00:02:36.660 --> 00:02:38.940
then I have some questions.

67
00:02:38.940 --> 00:02:40.800
If it's so, so, so high, I'm sort of like,

68
00:02:40.800 --> 00:02:43.230
I don't believe you, but maybe it's good.

69
00:02:43.230 --> 00:02:45.120
What I'll do usually is
read a review in a paper

70
00:02:45.120 --> 00:02:47.040
to kind of, like, clarify what's going on.

71
00:02:47.040 --> 00:02:48.000
- Oh, I see.

72
00:02:48.000 --> 00:02:50.940
You know, like, my boyfriend,
if something's below 60

73
00:02:50.940 --> 00:02:52.620
on Rotten Tomatoes for
instance, he's like,

74
00:02:52.620 --> 00:02:53.940
he has no time for it.

75
00:02:53.940 --> 00:02:56.280
But what I think is interesting
though is if it is so low,

76
00:02:56.280 --> 00:02:59.160
you almost wanna watch
just to see how bad it is

77
00:02:59.160 --> 00:03:01.703
and just, like, enjoy the badness.

78
00:03:01.703 --> 00:03:02.536
(Blake laughs)

79
00:03:02.536 --> 00:03:03.369
Or if it's so good.

80
00:03:03.369 --> 00:03:04.276
- Maybe leave a review yourself.

81
00:03:04.276 --> 00:03:05.109
- Exactly.

82
00:03:05.109 --> 00:03:06.997
Or if it's so good, you know, like,

83
00:03:06.997 --> 00:03:08.290
or if it says that it's so good,

84
00:03:08.290 --> 00:03:10.410
maybe you could watch it and be like, eh.

85
00:03:10.410 --> 00:03:11.441
- Yeah, like, do I agree?

86
00:03:11.441 --> 00:03:12.748
I don't know.
- It wasn't that good.

87
00:03:12.748 --> 00:03:15.780
Regardless though, what's
not cool is these types

88
00:03:15.780 --> 00:03:18.450
of review bombs, you know,
especially when it comes

89
00:03:18.450 --> 00:03:21.060
to something that's clearly
racist in some cases.

90
00:03:21.060 --> 00:03:21.893
- Right.

91
00:03:21.893 --> 00:03:24.540
And if, like, obviously most of these bots

92
00:03:24.540 --> 00:03:27.180
and kind of critics
haven't seen the movie,

93
00:03:27.180 --> 00:03:28.650
which is, like, part of the big problem

94
00:03:28.650 --> 00:03:31.177
and why IMDB was putting out
the statement saying like,

95
00:03:31.177 --> 00:03:34.080
"We want to preserve the feeling

96
00:03:34.080 --> 00:03:35.730
that you can trust these reviews."

97
00:03:35.730 --> 00:03:37.700
Because what it does more so than,

98
00:03:37.700 --> 00:03:39.360
in the long run what it does is, like,

99
00:03:39.360 --> 00:03:40.980
drag down the score of this one movie,

100
00:03:40.980 --> 00:03:43.380
and you're not gonna go back to IMDB

101
00:03:43.380 --> 00:03:47.490
because you're thinking, oh,
this is so easily influenced.

102
00:03:47.490 --> 00:03:50.280
And we saw this happen
with sites that maybe

103
00:03:50.280 --> 00:03:52.710
have less robust, like,
trust and safety systems.

104
00:03:52.710 --> 00:03:54.960
So there are some European sites.

105
00:03:54.960 --> 00:03:56.310
I'd never heard of AlloCine,

106
00:03:56.310 --> 00:03:58.380
but it's a French movie review site

107
00:03:58.380 --> 00:04:00.690
that was having the same problem,

108
00:04:00.690 --> 00:04:03.600
and the movie got
dragged down to like 0.5%

109
00:04:03.600 --> 00:04:04.680
or something like that.

110
00:04:04.680 --> 00:04:06.247
And the site was saying,

111
00:04:06.247 --> 00:04:08.250
"We're going to try and, like, fix this

112
00:04:08.250 --> 00:04:09.480
and weigh them differently."

113
00:04:09.480 --> 00:04:12.150
And that site has done this
before when review bombings

114
00:04:12.150 --> 00:04:13.650
were happening in the opposite direction.

115
00:04:13.650 --> 00:04:16.530
People are giving it 100%
score having not seen it also.

116
00:04:16.530 --> 00:04:18.617
- Ugh, why can't we have nice things?

117
00:04:18.617 --> 00:04:19.450
You know?

118
00:04:19.450 --> 00:04:20.970
You know, I was so obsessed
with "The Little Mermaid"

119
00:04:20.970 --> 00:04:21.803
when I was a kid.

120
00:04:21.803 --> 00:04:24.270
I'm actually so excited to
see the remake as well, so.

121
00:04:24.270 --> 00:04:25.980
- [Blake] I'll probably see it, I think.

122
00:04:25.980 --> 00:04:27.510
There's been so much news about it.

123
00:04:27.510 --> 00:04:29.670
It's been coming out for so long.

124
00:04:29.670 --> 00:04:31.110
I have read so much news

125
00:04:31.110 --> 00:04:32.730
about "The Little Mermaid"
that now I have to see

126
00:04:32.730 --> 00:04:33.960
what all the discourse is about.

127
00:04:33.960 --> 00:04:36.270
- I think, if anything,
the discourse could be

128
00:04:36.270 --> 00:04:37.355
about the animals,

129
00:04:37.355 --> 00:04:39.510
(Blake laughs)

130
00:04:39.510 --> 00:04:41.460
the animation there, right?

131
00:04:41.460 --> 00:04:42.293
- Completely.

132
00:04:42.293 --> 00:04:45.570
They look, Sebastian and
Flounder to me look very strange.

133
00:04:45.570 --> 00:04:48.747
- Okay. So, yeah, we'll check
out your review (laughs)

134
00:04:48.747 --> 00:04:50.490
on Sebastian and Flounder.

135
00:04:50.490 --> 00:04:52.740
- I am not leaving a, I'm not
wading into this review mess

136
00:04:52.740 --> 00:04:54.270
on IMDB, no way.

137
00:04:54.270 --> 00:04:55.560
- Yeah. Present, not voting.

138
00:04:55.560 --> 00:04:56.550
Same here.

139
00:04:56.550 --> 00:04:59.553
For more on this story,
check out gizmodo.com.