07/02/17 - IMDb shuts down its message boards (43)

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/feb/06/imdb-shuts-down-message-boards

This article is talking about how the IMDb website has shut down its message board for users to make comments on. They (IMDb) believed that it wasn't creating a positive place for the users and included that there monthly users contain of 250 million. The message board allows different users to make their own discussions on the website and allowed a lot of other users talk on it to. Whether it was talking about the movie itself or other sequels they would want to recommend to others. In addition, a spokesman told the guardian that "The human brains like to make connections. Somebody spots a connection between two things ... you want to share that knowledge". This meant that when ever someone saw something that they may want to make reference to, they would have immediately done that with the message board but a lot of the things turned out to be very negative as there were many different critics out there with an opinion that wasn't encouraging for a lot of the other users.

• More specifically, the company – which was set up in 1990 by Bristol-based IT worker Col Needham and later sold to Amazon
• The message boards will be permanently disabled on 20 February, following a two-week transition period.
• 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”

In my opinion, I believe that getting rid of the message board for others to interact on was a bad idea. This is because of the fact that people don't have that much accessibility to the website and cannot, in result, have the option of putting out their opinions. The internet is all about have the freedom to discuss what they want to, even if someone found it negative. We have many different social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter where we have the option of having an opinion and sharing news etc. Therefore, I believe that this this shouldn't have happened considering this isn't showing the freedom which the users online should have.