What do you mean by "pre-certifying movies as 'Fresh'"? They're pretty clear about the definition of "Certified Fresh":
> Movies and TV shows are Certified Fresh with a steady Tomatometer of 75% or higher after a set amount of reviews (80 for wide-release movies, 40 for limited-release movies, 20 for TV shows), including 5 reviews from Top Critics.
They can claim to use that algorithm, however in practice as of the last few years, that claim is extremely suspect as we have no way to determine whether or not RottenTomatoes cherry picked its reviews for the films.
Two glaring examples of "certified fresh" films loathed by audiences and top critics are Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skulls and the new Ghostbusters. Both have Audience scores in the low 50s and top critics scores in the low 60s, but "All Critics" scores are overwhelmingly positive enough to boost the score to just over 75% making them "Certified Fresh".
As far as "pre-certified" fresh, Rotten Tomatoes has taken upon themselves to sell Sponsored content and of those I've seen, Step and The Tick, as of right now, when the subject becomes Sponsored a wave of positive reviews is sure to follow.
> Two glaring examples of "certified fresh" films loathed by audiences and top critics are Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skulls and the new Ghostbusters. Both have Audience scores in the low 50s and top critics scores in the low 60s, but "All Critics" scores are overwhelmingly positive enough to boost the score to just over 75% making them "Certified Fresh".
Then what makes you think they cherry-picked their reviews? The Indiana Jones film has 260 reviews, and Ghostbusters has 325, both of which seem to be in the normal ballpark for huge wide releases. Indiana Jones is still at 77%, so it would still qualify as Certified Fresh today, while Ghostbusters is at 73%, just barely below the threshold.
I'm not seeing any reason to suspect foul play, and I don't understand why you would be upset. Audience scores and Top Critics are great pieces of information, but they're not how the Tomatometer or the Certified Fresh label work.
>Every day, a half-dozen Rotten Tomatoes staffers scour the web to find every review of every movie, collecting from major news outlets and well-known critics. They read each review and determine whether it is mostly positive or mostly negative.
>About half of the critics who appear on Rotten Tomatoes — often the more obscure set — submit their reviews, along with the ratings, to the site themselves. As reviews are indexed, Rotten Tomatoes calculates the score.
http://www.timescolonist.com/entertainment/movies/rotten-tom...
The notion they cherry picked reviews comes from the more than standard deviation away from Audience and Top Critic Reviews.
As far as your last statement, it does not appear you actually understand how a review is determined to be Fresh or Not for the Tomatometer
You're conflating two very different concepts: the source of reviews, and the algorithm for calculating the Certified Fresh status. Obviously RottenTomatoes aggregates reviews from the Internet. That is the entire point, but that doesn't match the usual definition of "cherry-picking." To convince me that they cherry-pick reviews to achieve a desired Tomatometer or Certified Fresh result, I would need some evidence. The difference between Tomatometer, audience scores, and top critics is not sufficient evidence of foul play, because it's exactly what I would expect from a fair process.
> Movies and TV shows are Certified Fresh with a steady Tomatometer of 75% or higher after a set amount of reviews (80 for wide-release movies, 40 for limited-release movies, 20 for TV shows), including 5 reviews from Top Critics.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/browse/cf-dvd-streaming-all/