Netflix Officially Starts Killing Off Its Five-Star Rating System

Starting today, Netflix will be killing off its five-star rating system and replacing it with a thumbs up/down rating system. The streaming service decided to change its rating system to make content recommendations more relevant to individual users.

Netflix first announced the new thumbs rating system earlier this month. The previous star ratings will still be used to personalize user profiles, but the stars will completely be removed from the interface, as originally reported by Variety.

Instead of stars, users will simply see what is being called as “percentage match scores” alongside the content. The higher the percentage, the more likely the content matches the user’s taste. The streaming service is able to do this based on the user’s viewing habits and overall behavior when watching TV shows and movies, according to TechCrunch.

Users can easily give movies and TV shows a thumbs up or a thumbs down rating. This will let Netflix easily know the user’s taste in content, and this will help the service provide better recommendations. The user’s thumbs rating will be run through algorithms that would provide the percentage match scores for shows and movies.

“A thumbs-up tells Netflix that you like something and want to see similar suggestions. A thumbs-down lets us know you aren’t interested in watching that title and we should stop suggesting it to you,” Netflix’s director of product innovation, Cameron Johnson said in a blog post. “You can still search for it, but we’ve heard what you were trying to tell us -- you aren’t a fan -- and it will no longer show up on your homepage.”

Netflix hopes that this new type of rating system and the use of an algorithm will result in people spending less time browsing and more time watching. “The more you teach us about your unique tastes, the better job we can do suggesting your next great binge-worthy show or that perfect title for movie night,” Johnson said.