All of this would be one thing if Rotten Tomatoes were merely an innocent relic from Web 1.0 being preyed upon by Hollywood sharks. But the site has come a long way from its founding, in 1998, by UC Berkeley grads, one of whom wanted a place to catalogue reviews of Jackie Chan movies. Rotten Tomatoes outlasted the dot-com bubble and was passed from one buyer to another, most recently in 2016. That year, Warner Bros. sold most of it to Fandango, which shares a parent company with Universal Pictures. If it sounds like a conflict of interest for a movie-review aggregator to be owned by two companies that make movies and another that sells tickets to them, it probably is.
If you found this of interest, check out the related article: Online Reviews Are Being Bought and Paid For. Get Used to It
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I miss when Roger Ebert was alive. I could just check his opinion, and it would 99% of the time tell me whether a movie was worth watching.
Trying to find a good barometer these days is really hard.