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Facebook strikes back against the group sabotaging Black Panther’s Rotten Tomatoes rating

Facebook strikes back against the group sabotaging Black Panther’s Rotten Tomatoes rating

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The group claimed responsibility for The Last Jedi’s low score on the site

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Facebook has reportedly removed a group that claimed to have sabotaged the score of The Last Jedi on Rotten Tomatoes, and also planned to review-bomb Disney’s upcoming film Black Panther, according to Marvel Studio News.

With Black Panther coming to theaters this month, a member of the group “Down With Disney’s Treatment of Franchises and its Fanboys” created an event to leave low ratings and negative reviews for the film as well as Solo: A Star Wars Story. The group also indicated they would set up additional events for Avengers: Infinity War and the company’s Marvel Netflix shows. Following reports of the plan, Rotten Tomatoes issued a comment saying it welcomes passionate fans who want to debate a film’s merits, but it doesn’t condone hate speech. It also indicated that its employees were preparing to monitor and address spam reviews. Here’s the full statement:

We at Rotten Tomatoes are proud to have become a platform for passionate fans to debate and discuss entertainment and we take that responsibility seriously. While we respect our fans’ diverse opinions, we do not condone hate speech. Our team of security, network and social experts continue to closely monitor our platforms and any users who engage in such activities will be blocked from our site and their comments removed as quickly as possible.

Facebook appears to have removed the group. Marvel Studio News posted a screenshot of a notification saying the group has been removed and that it violated the company’s community standards.

The group described itself as a pro-DC Expanded Universe fan page that opposes Disney’s Marvel and Star Wars franchises. It’s the same group that claimed responsibility for lowering the score of Star Wars: Episode VIII: The Last Jedi in December 2017, complaining that the film included “SJW” concepts by featuring prominent female characters that spoke down to the film’s male characters. They also claimed that the poor reviews for Warner Bros.’ DC films were due to Disney manipulating the press. Users claimed they were using bots to further lower the Marvel projects’ ratings, and they directed other like-minded fans to the page to post negative reviews. Following the December reports, Rotten Tomatoes issued a statement saying that while there was an uptick in reviews, they hadn’t “determined there to be any problems.”

The Verge has reached out to Facebook for comment and will update with any response.