this post was submitted on 12 May 2026
149 points (100.0% liked)

Enshittification

876 readers
57 users here now

Welcome to Enshittification

A community for everyone who misspelt it as enshitification.

"I the onceler felt sad as I watched them all go, but business is business and business must grow, regardless of crummies in tummies you know."

This is your space to document the decay, demise, and destruction of the tech world as we know it. Share stories, articles, and firsthand experiences that capture the ongoing decline of once-celebrated platforms, services, and companies in the late stage capitalist landscape.

From monopolistic corporate shifts to anti-user updates and the relentless pursuit of profit over quality—if it’s broken, bloated, or just plain bad, it belongs here. We’re here to spotlight the moves that make the tech world worse, one piece of enshittification at a time.

For some more positive takes
!disenshittify@lemmy.cafe !deshittification@thebrainbin.org

Guidelines
🔹 Stay on Topic: Only post content about the decline of tech products, platforms, or companies.
🔹 Quality Content: Give some context when posting links or articles to drive quality discussions.
🔹 Respectful Discussion: Critique companies, crappy tech, and capital, not community members.
🔹 Positive Monday: The first Monday of every month is reserved for positive content only that shows enshittification isn't inevitable.

Join us to expose the changes that ruin the things we once loved and to discuss what comes next in a tech world gone wrong.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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?

top 24 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] shittydwarf@sh.itjust.works 57 points 3 weeks ago
[–] PennyRoyal@sh.itjust.works 48 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

TMDB is a non-shit alternative

[–] sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Thanks for mentioning that site. I didn't know it exists. At first glance it seems pretty good.

[–] PennyRoyal@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 weeks ago

They have an app that I use quite often too. It’s not quite as comprehensive as IMDb, but it’s steadily improved over time

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 30 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Sounds like a great day for a competitor to pop up.

[–] CubitOom@infosec.pub 28 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)
[–] RamenJunkie@midwest.social 1 points 2 weeks ago

Or Letterboxd. They have funnier reviews anyway.

[–] Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

competiion will barely arise because the ai scrape stuff eventually hits a sites profitability. Ai scraping for example is why Rtings went subscription for full review access, as most users dont even bother to click through to the rtings source for recommendations after googling for a product review.

combination of gemini, AMP links and such has basically destroyed text based reviews

[–] inari@piefed.zip 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] tomenzgg@midwest.social 11 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Wikipedia doesn't offer user reviews, however.

I do read Wikipedia before I bother reading IMDb – even before today –, though.

[–] inari@piefed.zip 4 points 3 weeks ago

I just head to the Reception section and check the Rotten Tomatoes reviews

[–] cravl@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The dash-comma combo is killing me. 😅

[–] tomenzgg@midwest.social 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Haha; I had a friend, in college, who saw me use it one time and just paused before going, "Hate that."

I saw its use in an older document/manuscript, originally (I want to say that the writer was from ~1800s?), and thought it was a sensible enough means of handling when you've got two sentence fragments right next to each other; been using it, ever since.

[–] cravl@slrpnk.net 2 points 4 days ago
[–] omgboom@lemmy.world 17 points 3 weeks ago

Well, I guess I will never go to IMDb again

[–] SolarMonkey@slrpnk.net 11 points 3 weeks ago

I stopped using IMDB ages ago when they started serving their ads through the same domain they host all their other images on, so blocking ads broke the site entirely.

I left those ads blocked though, and just stopped using IMDB. Looks like I made the right choice.

[–] Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 3 weeks ago

Cutting off your leg because someone is standing on your foot

[–] massive_bereavement@fedia.io 8 points 3 weeks ago

Bye Felisha

[–] cobysev@lemmy.world 6 points 3 weeks ago

Good thing I don't care about others' reviews. If they start blocking access to movie information though, I might have to quit using their site.

[–] tomenzgg@midwest.social 5 points 3 weeks ago

What's the state of BookWyrm, these days?

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 2 points 2 weeks ago

When everything everything everything became an 8+ a few years ago, I stopped using them and rotten tomato.

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

I have an account that's like 25ish years old. Just logged in with userrname and password, lol. Making a new account though, bet you need to link a bunch of things.

[–] shirasho@feddit.online 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] RamenJunkie@midwest.social 2 points 2 weeks ago

I have an IMDB account but Inrefuse to use it because they got rid of the forums.