1 Answers
A review bomb is an Internet phenomenon where a large number of people—or in other cases, a few people with multiple accounts—leave negative user reviews online. The target can be a published work, a business, a product, or a service, and review bombs are made in an attempt to harm its sales or popularity. While a review bomb may be a result of customers criticizing the poor quality of the product, it can also be associated with perceived political and cultural issues around the product, its vendor, or related works. This is often done to draw wider and mainstream attention to that issue, especially if the vendor does not have an open communications channel or seems unresponsive to direct feedback. It may also be as a means of mass-driven coercion or simply a result of trolling. Review bombing is a similar practice to and shares characteristics of vote brigading.
The term is primarily associated with online media review aggregates and app stores, including Steam, Metacritic, IMDb, and Rotten Tomatoes. Justifications for these campaigns can include unpopular changes to an established franchise, controversies related to the product, or the behavior of developers or publishers. In response, some of these aggregate systems have devised means to detect or prevent review bombing.