Chinese sci-fi blockbuster The Wandering Earth attacked by trolls in one-star wars
- Citizen reviewers offered cash for bad reviews on entertainment platform Douban
- Thousands of comments removed and nearly 50 users banned for violating guidelines
China’s sci-fi blockbuster The Wandering Earth has been attacked by trolls on Douban, the Chinese version of entertainment database IMDb.
The film has raked in more than 2.4 billion yuan (US$355 million) in box office revenues since it was released last Tuesday, on the first day of Lunar New Year, and has been hailed by critics.
But by Wednesday its rating on Douban had dropped to 7.9 points out of 10 from its previous high score of 8.5 and users of the site were claiming they were being offered cash to post negative reviews.
Douban users posted screenshots of messages offering them 1,000 yuan (US$147) to post bad reviews of The Wandering Earth or to modify their previous reviews to one star in exchange for cash.
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They also pointed out that dozens of brief one-star reviews had appeared on the site that did not comment on the qualities of the film. Instead, the contributors had left remarks including “It’s nothing, I just wanted to give it one star, it’s too cheap” and “I want to make it more equal, I will add more once I’ve seen it”.
Similar trolling one-star reviews of the Douban app were also posted in recent days.