Netgalley Installs Yes/No Voting Button and My Heart Dies A Little

Bloggers, I know you love your Netgalley. Or, if you're anything like me, you have a love/hate relationship with them. Love? Hey, free books and you get them early. All you have to do is review them and you do that anyway, right? Hate? Well, it's self-loathing really. Personally, they test my willpower and suddenly I'm requesting and not touching my physical tbr pile in over a year! I love the fact that Netgalley is a separate entity from the usual book haunts. It is all about getting books into the hands of reviewers, librarians and book sellers so they, in turn, can get the word out. Netgalley has been a safe haven away from the sometimes drama filled world of review/reviewer/blogger drama and competition. We request our books and we walk away, hoping for a few requests to come through. We've all been on the same playing field. But after receiving an email from them two days in a row, I fear things may be changing. Please tell me I am wrong.

If you have not seen the email, here is a link to their blog post:

As of August 14, 2017, Netgalley has decided to start posting all submitted reviews on the book page which is a wee bit weird and unnecessary (if you ask me) but that is not all. If that were all I would've gone on with my day. I have nothing against them posting all the reviews even if I do find it a bit strange unless you're a librarian or buyer with a limited budged hoping to escape buying duds for your reading/buying public. But the typical blogger is requesting a book months before publication and likely hoping to find a gem without being influenced by outside reviews. At least, that's how I use Netgalley. I don't visit Netgalley to read reviews. That's why blogs, Goodreads and Booklikes are around.

So, though the review posting seems useless on a site such as Netgalley, my problem lies with the fact that they've installed a voting button so anyone who has a Netgalley account or suddenly creates one can up or downvote your reviews. ANONYMOUSLY. Without leaving any sort of comment on why they found your review helpful or not. This is troubling in so many ways. They don't like your face? They vote NO. They hate the book you loved (and vice versa)? They vote NO. They want all the ARC's? They vote NO.

I've tested the button by voting on my own review (yes, it allowed me to do that, ugh, who doesn't think their reviews are helpful?!) and the review of another blogger. I voted yes on both, then logged out, was able to look at the page, and the votes (either up or down) are not public knowledge. I also asked several other Goodreaders to log in and see if they could see any voting action. They couldn't. My question then, what is the ultimate purpose of the voting and who will have the ability to see the votes? Is it just there for funzies or is it there for publishers to see when they're distributing a limited number of ARC's? And if this is the case, will votes become a factor in a publisher deciding who will be approved for an ARC? This is pure speculation as of today because Netgalley is refusing to address any of these questions by monitoring comments and refusing to post them on their blog post. They've also deleted one comment that I know of so they are actively choosing NOT to address this issue and that worries me. See the Goodreads thread HERE if you'd like to read more about the many reader/blogger concerns (it's not just me, really!).

I've been reviewing for a long time and I've seen some ugly things go down in our little book world and it will be a very sad thing if Netgalley becomes a toxic place due to competition to get approved for the best ARC's or campaigns to knock out reviewers who don't always give five stars. I wonder, is Netgalley truly unaware of the dangers of downvoting (or upvoting) that have basically made Amazon's reviews become untrustworthy and also caused countless internet scandals including paid for reviews, campaigns to upvote/down vote reviews and on and on? It's revolting stuff and they can't possibly be that naive. Can they? Am I worried for no reason? I sure hope so but it seems to me like they are opening the floodgates for a whole mess of trouble.

What are your thoughts on this? Is this all worry for naught? Should I spend my time reading through my tbr pile, hoping for the best and doing this instead?

Please ease my mind or share your fears and have a great weekend!