The Internet Movie Database says its message boards are ‘no longer providing a positive, useful experience’ for the majority of its 250 million monthly users

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is shutting down its message boards, the organisation has announced.

In a statement on its website, the IMDb said it had “concluded that IMDb’s message boards are no longer providing a positive, useful experience for the vast majority of our more than 250 million monthly users worldwide”, and that the decision was “based on data and traffic”.

More specifically, the company – which was set up in 1990 by Bristol-based IT worker Col Needham and later sold to Amazon – said that a shift to social media had made the message boards less vital; users, they said, had “migrated to IMDb’s social media accounts as the primary place they choose to post comments and communicate with IMDb’s editors and one another”.

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The message boards had long been seen by Needham as an integral part of the IMDb’s appeal. He told the Guardian in 2013: “The human brain likes to make connections. Somebody spots a connection between two things ... you want to share that knowledge. And IMDb is a good platform.”

The news comes amid increasing disquiet at the influential website’s vulnerability to malign outside influence, with one recent example cited being the blizzard of negative polling for Raoul Peck’s Oscar-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro.

The message boards will be permanently disabled on 20 February, following a two-week transition period.