• CerebralHawks@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    53 minutes

    I’ve had an IMDb account longer than some Netizens have been alive. I feel like the Fediverse angles older, though, so I should be careful how I word it here. Popular social networks, though? Easy claim. Though, I feel like when people capitalise the B at the end, they might be younger? But I just checked and the B is definitely still lowercase, so I’m not sure where they got that it was upper.

    That said, I got rid of the app a while ago. I just browse to it in Safari (iPhone) or Firefox (Mac) now. The app is trash. I’ve migrated my data to TMDB, but the site’s not quite as good and lacks information, so I use both. (TMDB does not have an app. There’s an app on the App Store, but it’s not official and it sucks. So it’s browser-only for now.)

  • plenipotentprotogod@lemmy.world
    35 minutes

    Letterboxd isn’t a 1-to-1 replacement for imdb, but it does have user submitted reviews and ratings out of 5 stars. I would suggest giving it a shot if that’s primarily what you’re after.

    • nasi_goreng@lemmy.zip
      4 hours

      Amazon also owns IGDB (game database), Goodreads (books), and so on. For music data, they just support MusicBrainz which is open source, open license, and independent database. MusicBrainz have pilot project for books database, but it’s not as good as Goodreads or other DB yet.

  • darkdemize@sh.itjust.works
    6 hours

    Yep. Found that out a couple weeks ago for the same reason. I’m not giving them my data just to read some reviews. There’s literally no reason to hide those behind a login other than to harvest your info and viewing habits.

    • Donjuanme@lemmy.world
      6 hours

      But they already have your info and habits, that’s all pretty easy to gather with ip logs and cookies. They want even more, and they want you to have to ask them to delete it

      • goreverminski@lemmy.world
        5 hours

        Amazon already knows everything about you from your buying habits, down to menstrual cycles and toilet cleaning. What’s your favourite films on top of it?

        (I hate Amazon, finally deleted my decades old IMDb account a while back. Now if only I could rid myself of Amazon… They’ve not fulfilled a single order for me correctly since 2020 so it’s not even the ease that counts any more… One day!)

        • valar@lemmy.ca
          13 minutes

          Do it now. You will not regret it. There are alternatives for everything. Including just doing less online shopping.

        • OwOarchist@pawb.socialEnglish
          4 hours

          Almost anything you can find on Amazon, you can also find on Ebay. And sometimes Ebay is actually cheaper.

          • Bloomcole@lemmy.world
            2 hours

            As if that’s not a scummy company and Omidyar isn’t a complete POS
            americans LOL

  • Kefla [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    4 hours

    They want data. Email addresses and usernames they can sell. Everybody’s doing it to feed the evil beast known as advertising. It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

    • dan@upvote.au
      3 hours

      Companies sometimes sell their own first-party data, but not nearly as often as people think. If a company has data that other companies don’t have, a lot of the time they’ll want to keep it for themselves, since it can give them a competitive advantage over other platforms.

      If Amazon knows what movies and TV shows you like, they’re going to use that data to improve ad performance on their own platforms - suggested content on Prime Video, product ads on Amazon, etc. They’re not going to give it to some other company to use.

      The one major exception to that are data brokers. These are companies that only exist to sell data. These are less well known companies. They often use public data and combine it with things like supermarket loyalty data and purchase history.

  • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
    6 hours

    IMDb has been making shitty decisions for a long time. They have always been a business first, community last.

    I doubt RT is much better but I use it mostly. It at least has been consistently the same amount of shitty UI since inception. TheMovieDb.org has a decent ratings system too and is getting more use, but again it’s privately owned.

    I’m not aware of a community run and operated ratings DB that’s got any significant uptake… Would be glad to hear of one if anyone knows.

  • Dirt_Possum [she/her, undecided]@hexbear.netEnglish
    4 hours

    I’m not sure why other commenters are able to do this without an account, but I also was surprised just now to click on user reviews to see:

    Sign in to access user reviews - See opinions from other fans, or write your own review.

    It’s getting worse and worse with this shit all over the internet. They have fairly successfully already enclosed most of the commons, now they’re building up the walls higher and higher. It’s all about control and of course tracking. I used to use a frontend libremdb.iket.me to access IMDB, similar to nitter/xcancel to read twitter or invidious to watch youtube. But it looks like IMDB made sure that is completely broken now.

    Edit: It’s also a way to make people use the app instead of the website. This too is happening all over, reddit is well known for doing everything it can to force people onto the app, and their specific proprietary app. And it’s for the same reasons I mentioned above. It’s a lot harder to block ads from the app, but viewing the website with uBlock Origin on (and I refuse to browse any of the web without it, personally) you don’t have to view a single ad. And again, control. You have a lot more choice and options using a web browser, not to mention somewhat obscure your identity, even though that’s also becoming more impossible with browser fingerprinting. But using an app let’s them curate exactly what they want you to see, including ads, and also gives them your exact unique identity. I don’t know, I won’t use the app, but I’m assuming you have to have an account to use the app, so of course people on the app aren’t going to get a login wall because they’re already logged in.

    Fuck corporate enshittification. Fuck IMDB. Fuck Amazon.

    With you 100-com

  • meowmeow@quokk.auEnglish
    6 hours

    Meanwhile I go to IMDb and am not forced to create an account.