I don't have any written or direct evidence, however I worked for a public service broadcaster, who regularly dealt with Apple and Netflix, and the feedback from both was that star-rankings were driving a lot of royalty payments and user choice (people would ignore poorly ranked content). The impact of this was that low performing content providers made less money. By removing the collective scoring, the company would implement their own recommendations algorithms, which gave them the ability to both deliver 'better' recommendations based on what the user consumed and spread the royalty payments more broadly. If what you wanted was to see what everyone else was watching/listening to though, that's not in the interest of their business. Anecdotal and third hand but I believe the people that relayed this to me.
That makes sense, thanks for elaborating! I could imagine a different solution where instead you just don't report the overall star-average, to make it a harder metric to game, but still get to have a stronger feedback signal for your recommendations.
> "Netflix Ditches 5 Star Rating System, Is Amy Schumer to Blame?"
> "This past week, Netflix officially debuted their new Amy Schumer stand-up comedy hour The Leather Special. And it was instantaneously met with negative reviews. Some claim that Schumer's biggest critics got on Netflix and purposely drove down the rating of the special, some without even watching it. Schumer herself blames the 'Alt-Right' for sabotaging her latest effort. Now, it is being announced that Netflix is ditching its five-star rating system for something much more streamlined, a rating system that owes itself to the legacy of the late Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. Did Amy Schumer have anything to do with this new rating system? Probably not. But once in place, it will certainly help her Leather Special find a more appropriate audience."
