An addendum to my 2022 article on MUBI’s attitude toward - or rather, against - its community:
MUBI is now shadow banning sarcastic reviews that are critical of its programming, without notifying or informing the users.
Here’s just an example:
This is my tongue-in-cheek "review" of Tylor Taormina's abysmal Happer’s Comet (2022)
The Nadir of Mubi’s Summer of hell. When the best performance is delivered by a dog (Fredo Taormina, listed in the credits, I kid you not), it’s clear we have reached rock bottom. But Happer's Comet does deserve the Caligari Film Award, don't get me wrong. And the Tiempo de Historia Award, too. This should be watched back-to-back with Topology of Sirens. Taormina and Davies are the future of American indie cinema. We are in good hands so don't you worry about a thing. Go watch Gerwig’s "indie marvel" Barbie (TM), too, to feel part of the Zeitgeist.
And here are the visible, published interviews on the platform:
On the contrary, my short comment about a much better film, The Future Tense, which explicitly praises MUBI, is very visible because, well, it’s free marketing and promotion for the platform.
The erasure of my Happer’s Comet review - which is still accessible here, but not from the main page - exemplifies the practice of limiting or reducing the visibility of a user’s content on a platform without their knowledge: the very definition of shadow banning.
Notably, the original review garnered two hearts (the platform’s equivalent of 'likes'), indicating users’ growing dissatisfaction with the platform’s increasingly hostile decisions and policies, as well as their varied opinions on the quality of Happer’s Comet. Ironically, it’s the most popular review on the page - which says everything you need to know about the reception of Taormina’s film - other films have hundreds, sometimes thousands of incisive, thoughtful comments.
And yet, the comment is hidden.
Instead of allowing users to evaluate the relevance or quality of a review, the company is now exercising its draconian authority to shadow ban dissenting opinions.
Generally, users can access reviews by selecting one of the allowed parameters (i.e., ‘most recent,’ ‘most popular,’ ‘ranking’ - from high to low - this approach is clearly designed to highlight positive feedback and push negative reviews to the margins- it's a standard operating practice). This interface choice, which takes the shape of a small drop down menu, gives users some kind of agency, akin to the ‘upvote’ button on Reddit: users can decide by themselves which reviews best reflect their critical approach, praising views they like with hearts so that they acquire more visibility and condemning views they find irrational, unjustified or just dumb to oblivion with their indifference (= no heart).
Nonetheless, MUBI is now actively limiting the visibility of comments that question their programming choices.
This (admittedly trivial) example is interesting for a variety of reasons.
In the context of boutique film platforms, the indisputable paradigm is the Criterion Channel, which at least does not pretend to consider users as legitimate critical voices. On the contrary, it has an explicit top down, hierarchical approach. Criterion makes clear that film criticism is an exclusionary practice: only real critics, e.g., David Bordwell, have significant space on the platform. Critics are the tastemakers and fans do not matter (and rightly so, sorry Henry). In addition to its stellar catalog, the Criterion Channel is more honest and transparent about its agenda, priorities and prerogatives. Here, users are subscribers: for a small monthly fee, we will show you the very best cinema in the world. But we don't care about what you think. And we do not pretend that we do: we don't even want to know. Keep your opinions to yourself. Just watch our curated programs and learn.
On the other hand, MUBI pretends that film criticism is an inclusive, participatory practice and markets itself as a "community for film lovers". Here, users are cast as "participants in the experience": we are all in this together!! Give us your money and we will show you some stuff and we will pretend that we care about what you think about our stuff as long as you don't start complaining that we are showing fewer and fewer quality films for the same fee!! love emoji
In short, the Criterion Channel is a Gen X authority which predates the inanity of filterworld and yet was able to thrive in the jungle of platform capitalism.
MUBI is your average Millennial hipster: highly performative, often incompetent, and charmingly hypocritical.
Original article: How MUBI is deliberately killing its community