Netflix originals were receiving increasingly bad user reviews when the company decided to kill the feature

pulse 17:46 - 07 September 2018

Netflix ended its user reviews feature earlier this summer, citing "declining using over time." But according to data compiled by Cordcutting.com, Netflix originals had also seen a steady decline in user-rating scores, well before the company decided to bring its user reviews to an end.

Netflix ended its user reviews feature earlier this summer, citing "declining using over time."
But according to data compiled by Cordcutting.com, Netflix originals had also seen a steady year-over-year decline in user-rating scores, well before the company decided to bring its user reviews to an end.

Netflix announced in July that it would phase out its user reviews feature by mid August, and the company's stated reasoning, as reported by CNET, was that the feature had seen "declining usage over time."

But there could be another reason as well: Users were giving Netflix original shows and movies increasingly bad reviews.

According to data compiled by Cordcutting.com (before Netflix wiped out its user reviews data in August), Netflix original series and films had also seen a steady year-over-year decline in user-rating scores, well before the company decided to bring its user reviews to an end.

While the number of new Netflix originals increased exponentially over time, the average user ratings of Netflix originals dropped a full point, or 24 percent, on its five-star scale between 2012 and 2018, the site found.

(Note: The data on originals goes back to 2011 because several series now branded as "originals" were produced earlier than its original programming debut with "House of Cards" in 2013, such as "Borgia" in 2011 and "Lilyhammer" in 2012.)

The data supports a conjecture that Variety reported in July regarding "negative" user reviews, when describing the following "likely" reasoning for Netflix's decision to end the feature: