IMDb is pulling up the shutters: if you want to read user reviews in future, you need an account. What's behind the change and what alternatives remain.

TIL about it after reading this post. It seems to have started around 17/April

From the article:

a login barrier for reading does not really stop AI scrapers because bots can be equipped with accounts within a few minutes. Instead, many suspect that Amazon’s main aim is to increase the number of registered users. After all, those who are logged in can be tracked better – and can be provided with more targeted recommendations and advertising.

Are there open source alternatives to it?

  • shirasho@feddit.onlineEnglish
    1·
    22 days ago

    A couple of media related websites have started doing this recently. There is an influx of web scraping that has been causing performance degradation of the website, so requiring users to log in is a way of maintaining website performance for valid users.

    I totally understand that a lot of people dont want to create accounts or give personal information, and I understand that website degradation is not always the driving factor.