I Don't Buy That the Boards are Closing Due to Trolls...

Yep. They can't monetize these boards. Sucks. Love the movie/tv boards. Going to miss all the info on classic films.

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They're just trying to go in a trendier direction. Forums aren't what they were 10-20 years ago. Facebook, Disqus and Twitter have upstaged message boards. I think that's stupid because forums allow for a community with deeper conversation, but we're in this sad climate of short attention spans, on demand and 140 characters. And if you were after 1999, you don't know any better than that...

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Well, imagine a town hall meeting where everyone is shouting at the top of their lungs at the same time, practically NO ONE is listening, and the only people getting much attention are the one cursing and screaming incoherently and flinging their feces around. It wouldn't be suppressing anyone's "free speech" if they decided to just cancel this meeting.

There was an interesting incident recently where protesters at Berkely basically shut down the planned speech of a Trumpian right winger. What no one seems to notice is a lot of LIBERALS, moderates, and anti-Trump conservatives joined
in to criticize the "SJW" Berkely students (while Trump demonstrated HIS support for free speech by threatening to de-fund the ENTIRE university). Really though, this is no different than in 2009 when idiot teabaggers shut down ANY public debate on healthcare reform by screaming nonsense about Hitler at town-hall meetings or waving "Keep the govt. out of my Medicare!" signs. WHATEVER you think of "Obamacare", it would have been greatly improved by open-door debate and bi-partisan compromise, but the teabaggers were not about to let THAT happen. Now the shoe's on the other foot.

What's especially ironic though is this Berkeley speaker HIMSELF was a self-confessed "troll". You can't go around trying to destroy or disrupt EVERYONE ELSE'S free speech and then expect that they are going to respect yours. Two wrongs don't make a right, of course, but you really do reap what you sow sometimes.




"Let be be finale of seem/ The only emperor is the Emperor of Ice Cream"

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I have noticed that as well.

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fletcbk,

I think that the real reason is threefold. First, the founder of this site, Colon Needledick or whatever his name is, he is a total film dork. I think he originally thought the message board part of his site would just be other film school dorks talking about lame stuff like, "You need to add the tenth line producer on this film" or "Please add this grip on this movie." And when he quickly discovered that people were not talking about sh!t like that he got pissed and didn't like the message boards anymore. Hence, why then these boards never got updated and were never moderated. They were mostly ignored and tolerated probably because tons of people used them and were one of the main draws to the site despite what Colon's dubious numbers claim.

Second, Colon can't sell these boards. They don't bring him in any money. Which brings me to my third point.

Third, IMDb was a British site was my understanding until Colon sold out to Amazon of Seattle. Amazon now makes their own movies and TV shows. Which is really a huge conflict of interest. I have a feeling that Amazon and other studios hate these message boards. I can see negative feedback on these boards costing ticket sales, DVD/Blu-ray sales, streaming, and ratings. Over the years I have seen obvious studio accounts posting positive things about movies on these boards. So you know they paid attention to these boards. These boards are word of mouth and you know studios want to shut down bad word of mouth.

If it were really trolls a way easier fix than deleting them all and losing visitors to the site would be to just moderate the boards a hell of a lot better than they do. Delete messages but they also really need to ban people. I rarely see banning done.

Trolls is just the excuse or scapegoat. Colon just wants some dumb encyclopedia that tells you who acted in what and that's about it. He doesn't really want anyone discussing whether or not that actor is any good or not or if the movie they did blows. Especially now, I seriously doubt Amazon wants one of their websites where tons and tons of people are saying one of their movies sucks hard and to not stream it.

P.S. I think Colon and the people who run IMDb will regret this. I spend most of my time on IMDb reading the message boards. I spend very little time looking up anything. I usually already know what actor is in what movie. If I don't it might take me two seconds to look it up and them I'm off that page. Usually, I check into a movie, rate it, all of which takes less than 5 seconds, and then I read the message board under said movie. Which I might read that for a long time. So now I guess I am just checking in, rating it, and then off to another web site. I can't be the only one like this. Their page hits and time people spend on the site are going to go way down come February 20th.

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I loved the way IMDB does the boards. For me personally I like to say my piece then leave it on for a couple of weeks before deleting it cause I'm private in nature (yeah call me weird). Sometimes I just like hearing other peoples input or getting insight on things whether it be good or bad.

As for the social media creation account, yeah, I noticed that too. I first noticed it back when I used to post a lot on Huffington Post. Now that that's gone, I stopped posting there due to the need for a social media account. Probably a way to track people or datamine your life. Why you see how law enforcement has the ability to quickly identify peoples history and life in a short timeframe.

Funny how you speak of the book 'The Circle'. I just saw this on YT trending. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUlr8Am4zQ0

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fletcbk -

I Don't Buy That the Boards are Closing Due to Trolls... It sounds like complete crap that the boards are closing due to trolls or as the announcement says "not a positive experience."

I've been a grateful participant here for years - all free of charge. :) This company has dealt with me and so far as I can tell, with others, very fairly. So, I have no reason to doubt their word... they've earned my trust. Also, I am not entitled to an explanation for their business decision.

I think it's because Amazon--IMBD's parent company--doesn't like that there's a relatively anonymous way for people to say things, and I've noticed the comments sections on a lot of websites are now being tied to social media profiles.

I'd suggest going to you tube and watch some videos like Edward Snowden at Harvard or any DefCon snippets. There has been no such thing as internet anonymity for a long, long time.

Right now, internet companies and everyone, really, is making choices based on just how much they want to interact with government surveillance and in cyber warfare concerns. Maybe IMDb's discussion boards make them more susceptible to interference if they continue hosting a public forum?

It kind-of feels like that book "The Circle," where a tech company's first step towards creating a monopoly was getting rid of internet anonymity.

That ship sailed.

Good luck to Everyone! Thank you for your posts. :)


~~~ "Thinking" involves a lot more work than simply "having a thought"! ~~~

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The boards are gone.

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