A Facebook group that plotted and planned to create mayhem for the Black Panther movie on crowdsourced film-review site Rotten Tomatoes has been taken down.
On Friday, Facebook deactivated the group Down-With-Disneys-Treatment-of-Franchises-and-its-Fanboys, reportedly started by a dude who calls himself “alt-right” or, in black-speak, “all-white.”
In the last week, the group created an event, “Give Black Panther a Rotten Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes,” that drew 3,700 participants. The goal was to flood the site with negative audience scores when Black Panther hits theaters Feb. 16.
Before the group was shut down for violating the social networking site’s community standards, Rotten Tomatoes publicly denounced the move, releasing a statement Thursday:
We at Rotten Tomatoes are proud to have become a platform for passionate fans to debate and discuss entertainment, and we take that responsibility seriously. While we respect our fans’ diverse opinions, we do not condone hate speech. Our team of security, network and social experts continue to closely monitor our platforms, and any users who engage in such activities will be blocked from our site and their comments removed as quickly as possible.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the deactivated group was formed because it believes that Disney has somehow created negative publicity for Warner Bros.’ DC Comics movies, and says it is waging the Black Panther campaign in response.
So they would like us to believe that this campaign was part of some perverse war against Disney? But I think we all know why Black Panther was targeted.
And it has nothing to do with DC Comics or Disney.