IMDb is owned by Amazon. Use TMDB (the movie database) instead.
this post was submitted on 12 May 2026
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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.
It started when Amazon bought them
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.
Enshitification
Iβm only there to look at actors and see what theyβre in or view their actor relationships (siblings, spouses, kids, etc.)
Because Amazon bought it
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
Isn't tmdb prone to the same enshittification if it gets enough traction?
As is everything that isnt open source
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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.
see also Letterboxd for just reviews
IMDb has been trash for like a decade now
Somebody recently acted like I was weird for looking up an actorβs filmography on Wikipedia instead of imdb. But I HATE imdbβs 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 itβs just presented in a simple table
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 π . 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 π
At leeast tvtropes.org and imfdb.org are still ok. :)
I hit the same wall as OP yesterday but found myself on tvtropes instead which now has about 20 tabs open.
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?
No ads with unlock origin.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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TIL Amazon owns IMDB?
Wait till you find out who owns Rotten Tomatoes...
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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Is there a Fediverse IMDb equivalent?
Not everything needs to be fediverse.
Anyway, TMDB and TVDB are potential rivals
Not everything needs to be fediverse.
The way things are going, I'd argue otherwise lol
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 π€ 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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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.
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.
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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