International Movie Database popularly known as IMDb on Monday changed its method of calculating rating for the recent release, ‘The Kashmir Files’. The film directed by Vivek Agnihotri had its rating changed to 8.3 from 10 after detecting ‘unusual voting activity’.
The film has received over 391,000 votes with 94.6% of voters giving the score of 10 while 3.9% have given a rating of 1. On the film’s rating page, it is mentioned: ‘Our rating mechanism has detected unusual voting activity on this title. To preserve the reliability of our rating system, an alternate weighting calculation has been applied.
Fans of the film accuse the Amazon-owned platform for sabotaging the rating and accusing it to sell-out. Vivek Agnihotri tweeted his objection towards the change in the ratings and termed it as “unusual and unethical. ” Fans of the film also demanded that the decision taken by the site be reversed and ‘fairness’ be restored. Some fans have called for the boycott of IMDb and are giving 1 star review on Google Play Store
The @IMDb page of #TheKashmirFiles says: "Our rating mechanism has detected unusual voting activity on this title. To preserve the reliability of our rating system, an alternate weighting calculation has been applied".
They have themselves dipped the ratings 😡 @vivekagnihotri
— Homi Devang Kapoor (@Homidevang31) March 14, 2022
THIS IS UNUSUAL AND UNETHICAL. https://t.co/Iwcc7yQCGk
— Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri (@vivekagnihotri) March 14, 2022
https://twitter.com/Bhaaratsharma55/status/1503398298140303369?s=20&t=uWGshva3tJMWem9J3zkVwA
#IMDb is maliciously manipulating ratings of #TheKahsmirFiles movie. #BoycottIMDb pic.twitter.com/TdEtONSf7d
— Krishna Reddy 😎 (@iDiyaKrishna) March 15, 2022
IMDb explains weighted rating as: “IMDb publishes weighted vote averages rather than raw data averages. The simplest way to explain it is that although we accept and consider all votes received by users, not all votes have the same impact (or ‘weight’) on the final rating. When unusual voting activity is detected, an alternate weighting calculation may be applied in order to preserve the reliability of our system. To ensure that our rating mechanism remains effective, we do not disclose the exact method used to generate the rating.”
The Kashmir Files stars Anupam Kher, Mithun Chakraborty, Darshan Kumar, Prakash Belawadi and Pallavi Joshi. The film revolves around the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990 released in cinemas on March 11. Made on a budget of 20 crores, it has already breached the 50 crore mark and has turned out to be a blockbuster for the makers
