Versant, the parent company of the review aggregation website, said in a statement to Variety this week that there is no bot manipulation behind the fact that Melania carries a 99% approval rating with audience members, but only 7% with critics. There has been no bot manipulation on the audience reviews for the Melania documentary, Versant said. Reviews displayed on the Popcornmeter are VERIFIED reviews, meaning it has been verified that users have bought a ticket to the film.
The goal, of course, is to avoid the abuses that can happen in monopolies and with the goal of protecting consumer choice and protecting innovation. What happened was that iRobot and Amazon came together for the expressed purpose of creating more innovation, more consumer choice, at a time when iRobot's trajectory was honestly different from where it was several years earlier.