Thumbs Up? Netflix Star Ratings Are Leaving

There is a lot of content on Netflix and it can be really hard to decide what is and isn’t worth your precious binge-watching time. As we had learned before, the Netflix star ratings that we’ve come to embrace don’t reflect the entirety of the Netflix-watching audience. Instead, you’re only getting the average ratings of viewers with similar watching habits as you. But those ratings are on the outs.

At a press briefing yesterday, Netflix Vice President of Product Todd Yellin said that the old five-star rating system is being phased out. In its place, we’ll find a “thumbs up, thumbs down” system not dissimilar to what we see on YouTube. One difference is that instead of (or possibly in addition to) showing the total number of thumbs up or down, it’ll show a relative percentage to let you know whether or not the all powerful algorithm thinks you’ll like the show.

Part of the rationale, based on testing that’s been going on as far back as 2006, is that over 200 percent more people provided a thumbs up/down rating than those who provided a rating on a star-based system. And more data is a good thing, even if it’s so binary, so black and white.

But “five stars feels very yesterday now,” according to Yellin.