Star ratings are out and thumbs going up and down are in – yet deciding whether to watch London has Fallen should still be a personal decision

It’s been clear for some time that Netflix’s star-based user rating system is essentially hopeless. It operates on the assumption that all of its 94 million subscribers share an equal and objective view on quality, which absolutely isn’t the case.

For example, my Netflix account tells me that Flaked, the go-nowhere sadcom that was presumably made only to thank Will Arnett for doing the Bojack Horseman voice, is a four-star work of art. Meanwhile Michael Bolton’s Big, Sexy Valentine’s Day Special – a genuinely expectation-shifting piece of absurdist comedy starring some of the most talented comedians on Earth – only has a measly two stars. This is messed up and back-to-front, and there is one simple explanation for it.

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People are awful.

Of course that’s the answer. It’s always the answer. People ruin everything. It’s why the People’s Choice Awards are always won by Matt LeBlanc and Bad Moms and The Girl on the Train. It’s why the YouTube comments section is always an unyielding pit of despair. It’s why Ed Sheeran exists. Everyone on Earth is the worst, except for me, because I’m the only person on Earth who actually likes good things. That’s the only lesson to be learned from Netflix’s star system.

So, on paper, news that Netflix is phasing out the stars in favour of a thumbs up/thumbs down system should be heartening. From later this year, we’re told, Netflix subscribers will be asked one simple question: essentially, did you like this or not? Click the thumbs-up button and Netflix will suggest similar titles for you to watch; click the thumbs-down and it’ll make that sort of thing harder to find during future visits. Percentages will also be introduced, to show you how suited you are to any given content. It’s viewing as online dating basically, except with the inbuilt reassurance that – no matter how badly it goes – Sense8 isn’t going to flood you with needy texts when you duck out after episode two.

This laser-focused personalisation should help to dispel some of the knottier aspects of Netflix’s current rating system, like the annoying virtue-signalling quirk where users give higher ratings to important eat-your-vegetables documentaries than the dumb Adam Sandler movies they watch over and over again. Also, obviously, it’ll mean that the fate of Netflix’s entire library will no longer be governed by people whose lives are so howlingly empty that they have to star-rate episodes of Gilmore Girls for emotional validation. Imagine.

However, let’s not go overboard here. Whether it’s thumbs or stars, the likelihood is that Netflix’s algorithms will still be a bit crap. For example, my homepage is currently desperate for me to watch the Naomi Watts Princess Diana film because I watched and enjoyed The Crown, a suggestion that fails to take into account the fact that I’d rather drink bleach and set myself on fire than watch the Naomi Watts Princess Diana film. Similarly, it offers a long list of aggressively stupid action thrillers because I watched London Has Fallen the other week, even though I spent most of London Has Fallen openly weeping for the miserable state of this stupid planet.

So let’s all just cool our jets for a moment. People are awful, but artificial intelligence is just as awful. I am the only good thing about the world, and only my taste alone is to be trusted. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to watch the next queued film on my list. Expendables 2, here we come.