Why Did Netflix Kill Their ‘Average User Rating’ Feature? We Have Answers!

Now that Netflix has fully rolled out their slick new desktop UI (user interface), you’re bound to notice some stark changes from their old design right off the bat. Most stark, of course, is the change from its old white background to a very cinematic black, but look closer and you’ll notice that there’s now one universal rating for each movie and show on the platform. This means no more “Average User Rating” and no more “Netflix Suggests rating” scores (the latter of which pertained to your individual taste). What users see now is a star rating that could be derived from any average number of user ratings, what Netflix suggests for you, or culminated member reviews. We talked to Netflix first-hand in an attempt to get to the bottom of one the more personalized aspects of the streaming platform.

To help jog your memory, prior to the recent Netflix user interface redesign, title pages used to look a little something like this:

Directly under the title, year, and duration, you’ll see a number of “best guess” stars used to populate the ratings section. This particular rating was based on your previous interests including what you’ve watched and rated in the past. Even if you rarely take the time to necessarily give something your stamp of approval or disapproval, Netflix has a general idea of what you might be into based on your routine viewing habits and their intuitive algorithm.

In terms of The Interview, the 2.9 suggested rating for my colleague Tyler could be a 4.5 for someone who works down the hall from us and has rated James Franco’s previous endeavors favorably. The average rating, however, lies in the number directly below what Netflix recommends for you, which in this case is 3.8, based on an average of over 800,000 member ratings (including reviews). This average Netflix user rating was beneficial for understanding what the general populace thought of a title and, if you’re the kind of viewer who takes into consideration what others suggest, even helped you discover what series you were willing to watch.

Now, after clicking on a title, what we see under the new “Overview” tab is this:

Itty bitty stars that suggest… what?! Is this how I would rank The Interview? Is this how the Netflix community has ranked The Interview? Is this rating the culmination of member reviews on The Interview? We clicked on the details page in an effort to dig deeper but were met with only member reviews and some production notes.

After speaking with Netflix, we were told that the new rating is a “simplified” version of the previous two ratings featured on the old interface. A representative of Netflix confirmed to Decider that when designed the new UI, “We opted to simplify to be consistent with our other UIs and to avoid confusion.” Though Netflix wouldn’t go into further detail, this makes sense considering that the desktop UI was inconsistent with that of Roku or XBOX One, for example. On these specific consoles, there was only one universal rating for each title, like you see below on XBOX One.

From what we can gather, this new rating is a combination of the previously promoted user ratings plus what Netflix thinks you’ll like. This is demonstrated by the continuing differences in landing pages between members. For example, my rating for The Interview is still 2 stars, but my colleague Terri sees an average of 1.5 stars when she searches for the exact same title, as seen below.

So what’s the takeaway? Netflix is still striving to suggest the best of what you might want to watch — just as they did before — only now things look different in your desktop browser, matching those landing pages you’d find if you used the service on a streaming console like Roku, XBOX One, or Apple TV. If you don’t typically use Netflix on your desktop or laptop computer, chances are you’ve only seen one rating for a much longer time than we computer nerds have.

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Photos: Netflix