A lot of sites removed even tranquil and harmonious comments sections due to fear of legal liability, and also because moderating them was a cost center. IMDB used to have a comments section where film buffs could talk about cinema, often in much greater depth and competence than one would find on e.g. Reddit today. Lonely Planet had the Thorn Tree forums where one could discuss travel with a real community of fellow travel nerds. All gone.

Beyond the decline of longform text due to phone keyboards, I actually think that the restriction of active communication to a handful of detrimental social-media platforms is a big part of why people report feeling more lonely today. Back when the blogosphere and Phpbb forum ecosystems were healthy, people talked about finding friends around the world online.

I was wondering if the removal of IMDB's comment section coincided with Amazon's purchase of IMDB, but I looked it up, and apparently Amazon has owned IMDB since 1998?! Somehow I thought it was more recent, like within the past 10 years, at most.

I guess Amazon was content to leave it alone for many many years, but more recently decided to push harder at monetizing it. Even the mobile IMDB app now has ads for random products on amazon.com. It's gross.

I never participated in IMDB's comment forum, but I would sometimes read through some of it, and generally found the quality of discussion to be very high.

Yeah, IMDB losing its discussion board was definitely a loss for the planet.