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What the F is up with IMDB?

5 months ago by stumu415 to c/asklemmy

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Just wanted to check some user reviews for a serie, now IMDB forces me to create an account. Such bullshit to read some reviews. No fucking way. Fuck corporate enshittification. Fuck IMDB. Fuck Amazon.

PerfectDark 115 points 5 months ago

I've been using tmdb out of spite since they brought this shitty change in. Less reviews, but I can be the change I want to see, and submit reviews here myself

https://www.themoviedb.org/

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goreverminski 27 points 5 months ago

I deleted my decades old IMDb account recently and migrated here. Meager protest against Amazon, I know, but tmdb is definitely good enough. Don't miss a thang.

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pineapple 23 points 5 months ago

Isn't tmdb prone to the same enshittification if it gets enough traction?

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valar 23 points 5 months ago

As is everything that isnt open source

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Bloomcole 10 points 5 months ago

Just checked for 2 minutes and immediately noticed clearly astroturfed fake and AI reviews.

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MalReynolds 15 points 5 months ago

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Aatube 8 points 5 months ago

see also Letterboxd for just reviews

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ok_effect 42 points 5 months ago

IMDb is owned by Amazon. Use TMDB (the movie database) instead.

themoviedb.org

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LightYagami 5 points 5 months ago

Thank you

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darkdemize 42 points 5 months ago

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.

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Donjuanme 21 points 5 months ago

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

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darkdemize 3 points 5 months ago

That may well be so, but I have no intention of making things even easier for them.

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goreverminski 3 points 5 months ago

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!)

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valar 5 points 5 months ago

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

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goreverminski 2 points 5 months ago

Preach! For sure, been cutting down as much as possible. It helps that prices are thru the roof and I don't need a lot.

I've always been a major thrifter, almost everything I own is second hand or hand me down, but I also happen to enjoy collecting, which is where the online element sometimes comes in.

Don't get me wrong, I've only ordered from Amazon less than a dozen times, never had Prime, and most of my purchases have always been local.

I honestly love that folks are trying to wean off the toxic teat that is US technocracy. I can jive with it.

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OwOarchist 4 points 5 months ago

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

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Bloomcole 2 points 5 months ago

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

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Bloomcole 1 point 5 months ago

LOL stop crying when you still support them.

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goreverminski 1 point 5 months ago

If you don't like the discussion, you can skip it :) I think it's better to vocalize the issue so we can look at it together.

I personally boycotted Amazon for several years around the 2020s before resorting to purchases I felt I needed and couldn't get elsewhere.

After being burned so many times, I've certainly reconsidered my wants and needs overall - if Amazon is the only way, do I need it at all?

If you don't think that's anything, I don't know what to tell ya.

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Mihies 29 points 5 months ago

TIL Amazon owns IMDB?

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nasi_goreng 25 points 5 months ago

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.

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Mihies 7 points 5 months ago

I knew about Goodreads but not the others. Enshittification, indeed.

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Bonesince1997 5 points 5 months ago

Some other sites to check out: Discogs (all music) and VGMdb (video game music). I don't know about ownership.

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Appoxo 3 points 5 months ago

Discogs is inferior to musicbrainz in terms of information.
To me it's only value is the market place (which is very good)

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DFX4509B 4 points 5 months ago

They also bought out and screwed DPReview.

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Mihies 1 point 5 months ago

Ah, right, totally forgot about that 🥺

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Melonpoly 2 points 5 months ago

Wait till you find out who owns Rotten Tomatoes...

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Mihies 2 points 5 months ago

👀 when one thinks it can't get worse...

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adarza 1 point 5 months ago

one of their earliest acquisitions, way tf back in '98

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zdhzm2pgp 1 point 5 months ago

Alas yes. 🙁

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prole 23 points 5 months ago

IMDb has been trash for like a decade now

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charokol 26 points 5 months ago

Somebody recently acted like I was weird for looking up an actor’s filmography on Wikipedia instead of imdb. But I HATE imdb’s interface and will avoid it every time if I can. Wikipedia might not have every project a person has worked on but it has enough and it’s just presented in a simple table

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W3dd1e 22 points 5 months ago

Ew I didn’t know they were owned by Amazon. Gross.

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NigelFrobisher -3 points 5 months ago

If only they were!

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Skankhunt420 9 points 5 months ago

But they are. Since 1998.

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NigelFrobisher 6 points 5 months ago

Weird, that’s totally not the message I was replying to. Obv I know that.

I remembered! It said “apart of Amazon” originally, and I was being a japester pedant.

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wickedrando 19 points 5 months ago

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pulsewidth 15 points 5 months ago

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.

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OldChicoAle 12 points 5 months ago

Because Amazon bought it

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dotAlexX 12 points 5 months ago

I miss the imbd forums and reading about all the different theories viewers had on movies and shows. Enshitification of imbd started when they just randomly one day got rid of the forums.

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belunos 6 points 5 months ago

It started when Amazon bought them

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Quokka 11 points 5 months ago

Is there a Fediverse IMDb equivalent?

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piyuv 9 points 5 months ago

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Appoxo 9 points 5 months ago

Not everything needs to be fediverse.

Anyway, TMDB and TVDB are potential rivals

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ordnance_qf_17_pounder 10 points 5 months ago

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vapor_body 3 points 5 months ago

Just found out one of the site runners I believe it was @nutomic@lemmy.ml is making a federated wiki, which is terrific considering how wikis work and the process of filtering out the ideological bullshit on Wikipedia itself. Less drama since there's split, more tightly-knit teams, but also consider the possibility of being caugut up in multiple wiki moderation wars simultaneously 🤔 who knows if it would increase or decrease overall moderation spaghetti

The point is, what could possibly be worse than the current wikipedia moderation? They are absolute nolifer hellions

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nutomic 3 points 5 months ago

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Appoxo 1 point 5 months ago

This feels like a shoehorned approach.
IMO the way musicbrainz solves it, is a good approach.

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zdhzm2pgp 3 points 5 months ago

There's an invidious-type equivalent for imdb, libremd, but it unfortunately tends to break and may not have been updated in a while.

EDIT: You can try and see if there are any instances of it that still work.

EDIT EDIT: Couldn't get a single instance to work. I think the project might need someone new to take it over.

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Blue_Morpho 1 point 5 months ago

IMDB started as an open wikipedia type website where everyone contributed content about movies and actors.

As soon as volunteers had added enough content that it was really useful, the IMDB creators locked out the contributors and sold it.

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plenipotentprotogod 11 points 5 months ago

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.

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yilian 10 points 5 months ago

I’m only there to look at actors and see what they’re in or view their actor relationships (siblings, spouses, kids, etc.)

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funksoulkitchen 3 points 5 months ago

Its for when you recognize an actor, but can't recall what you know them from. And it's bothering you that you don't know

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FrChazzz 3 points 5 months ago

I'm there for the trivia after I watch a movie. Sometimes to watch people's mental issues play out in the "goofs" section.

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vapor_body 9 points 5 months ago

hi, just wanted to notify you that this can be circumvented automatically with a https://libredirect.github.io/ linking to an IMDB instance. I just checked and there is at least one public instance available. It has a button in the settings that scans a public registry of them, it can randomly select from them, and there is a button in its popup menu to automatically remove any broken instance + reroll. Often there are some that exist it doesn't know about, and the whole point is that you can host your own. In fewer words, it's a collection of private frontends run by a variety of collectives and hobbyists, with a slick addon that works in Firefox Android mobile btw 😎 . This should drastically improve your experience on mainstream websites, especially if you are the kind who "just drops in for second" and slams into a stupid login wall

Don't get caught lacking my friend nobody should be browsing default Youtube and IMDB layout. They have themes 🎀

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goreverminski 8 points 5 months ago

There's a really nice TMDb compatible Android app called ShowCase, btw.

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Trying2KnowMyself 8 points 5 months ago

It’s gotten more aggressive, but it hasn’t forced me to create an account yet.

E: hmm, the app doesn’t force me to sign in, but I do see that if I try to use a web browser.

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okwhateverdude 13 points 5 months ago

You don't need to log in with the phone app, you've already given them everything they need by installing their spyware

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cinoreus 2 points 5 months ago

They don't force me to sign in when using browser. Are you from a Western country?

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lemmylump 7 points 5 months ago

Enshitification

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cerebralhawks 5 points 5 months ago

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.)

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goreverminski 1 point 5 months ago

Yeah I had a teenaged account as well. It's gone now. I don't really need any interaction from the website, just tracking, so TMDb is more than fine for my purposes.

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adarza 1 point 5 months ago

i had one back in the earliest of days and used to add missing data to credits. i still occasionally catch myself trying to use 'us.imdb.com' as its address.

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diptchip 3 points 5 months ago

At leeast tvtropes.org and imfdb.org are still ok. :)

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laserjet 4 points 5 months ago

I hit the same wall as OP yesterday but found myself on tvtropes instead which now has about 20 tabs open.

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lastlybutfirstly 1 point 5 months ago

What are the ads like there? TV Tropes insists I turn off my ad block, which is usually a bad sign.

Also, looking at IMBD, it's weird they ask "Are you a new customer?" Customer? What the hell are they selling? Info that can be found more easily on Wikipedia and a jillion other websites?

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laserjet 1 point 5 months ago

No ads with unlock origin.

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daannii 3 points 5 months ago

Yeah I tried to look at an episode list on my phone. Tried to force me to download an app. No way to view the website on my phone.

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the_armchair_potato 2 points 5 months ago

Not sure what your talking about. You can still access IMDB from a browser. You talking about something else?

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valar 7 points 5 months ago

I believe it's if you try to read reviews

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laserjet 1 point 5 months ago

Yesterday I went to read a review on a show and when you click to read past the preview you hit a wall asking for an account (and in my recollection a payment). Must be a recent change.

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Nemo 1 point 5 months ago

Yeah I just used it last night.

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zdhzm2pgp 2 points 5 months ago

Can the IMDb be scraped? Not necessarily for the reviews, but for the titles, actors, and so forth. Kind of wish Anna's Archive had done that instead of Spotify.

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boonhet 8 points 5 months ago

Any website can be scraped if you want it badly enough.

However, tmdb is a significantly less shitty alternative, even if data isn't always as good. It also has a free API for non-commercial use, so FOSS apps can use it for free.

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harsh3466 2 points 5 months ago

The Move Database is great. Yes the info is sometimes not quite as good as amazon, but it's way more open than IMDb. You can edit info, and the api is great. I use it in the cli tool I built for myself.

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harsh3466 1 point 5 months ago

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Soulifix 1 point 5 months ago

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meowmeow 1 point 5 months ago

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

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