Login
You're viewing the front-end.social public feed.
  • C.cazabon@mindly.social
    Oct 27, 2026, 7:35 PM

    Oh, *this* is scummy.

    Amazon, owner of IMDB (The Internet Movie Database), has decided that being logged into Amazon when you visit IMDB automatically means you consent to them auto-creating an account on IMDB for you. And, of course, transferring your personal info from Amazon to IMDB to populate that account.

    And *that* account is by default signed up to all of their spam and marketing preferences.

    All of this happens with zero clicks - no consent whatsoever.

    I'm going through and turning it all off, and will try to see if I can just delete it completely afterwards.

    #Amazon #IMDB #spam #marketing #consent #privacy #violation

    💬 32🔄 41⭐ 0

Replies

  • C.cazabon@mindly.social
    Oct 27, 2026, 7:40 PM

    I confirmed they transferred the name and email address from my Amazon account to IMDB.

    There is a "request deletion" function, which I selected. They want to confirm that via email, despite the fact that they had no problem creating the account without confirmation, or even consent.

    This would be wildly illegal under GDPR so I suspect people in the EU will not see this behaviour, but I'd be curious to hear from people there.

    It might even be illegal under PIPEDA in Canada, but hey, what's one more USAnian company violating our privacy laws...

    #confirmation #GDPR #EU #PIPEDA #Canada #illegal #USA #USAnian

    💬 3🔄 0⭐ 0
  • C.cazabon@mindly.social
    Oct 27, 2026, 11:08 PM

    So, about that account deletion feature ... they even found a way to dark-pattern *that*.

    You go to the page for account deletion, only to be told you can press the button to request it, which they say they might refuse to do. But if they decide to "allow" it, they send you a confirmation email.

    You follow the link in the email, and they show you a page that looks pretty much exactly like the one you used to request it in the first place. If you don't follow the slightly-changed button link at the bottom, you never completed the "confirmation", and your deletion request goes nowhere.

    At some point, privacy legislation starts to look like an inadequate substitute for firebombing datacenters and megacorp office complexes. 🤷

    💬 3🔄 4⭐ 0
  • C.cazabon@mindly.social
    Oct 27, 2026, 7:46 PM

    They updated their info about this "feature" today (27 October 2026):

    help.imdb.com/article/imdb/gen

    > What's changing?
    >
    > IMDb uses Amazon's account system for sign-in and new account creation, on both
    > IMDb.com and the IMDb iOS and Android apps. If you sign in with alternative methods,
    > you will be prompted to migrate your account to sign in with Amazon going forward.
    > In some cases, you may be automatically signed in with your Amazon account.

    "In some cases"... ya, right. I bet that's "unless you've already linked your Amazon and IMDB accounts".

    💬 1🔄 0⭐ 0
  • C.cazabon@mindly.social
    Oct 28, 2026, 2:26 AM

    The fact that they default you into receiving all their spam, when they haven't even asked for permission to create the account on your behalf, is the most offensive thing about this (to me).

    I'm an email guy, and a privacy guy, and a been-on-the-net-for-about-40-years guy, and the fact that someone - a whole chain of someones - in some "legitimate" for-profit company just decided to add me to a bunch of spam they send out makes me want to introduce them to the residents of the Mariana trench.

    #spam #argh #IMDB #Amazon

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • Neil Van Dykeneilvandyke@mastodon.social
    Oct 27, 2026, 11:48 PM

    @cazabon I wonder whether it was decided, at the top, to cash in Amazon brand goodwill. Or whether someone lower in the org chart is unilaterally cashing it in, to juice their performance metrics for something like IMDB-linked ad revenue.

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • Cal Q Alaera :HeartNonbinary:Cal@kind.social
    Oct 28, 2026, 6:56 AM

    @cazabon This didn't happen to me (UK user) buuuuut I'm a LibreWolf user which blocks cross-site cookies, so that might have frustrated their efforts.

    I don't doubt they could fingerprint my browser session if they wanted to though, even with resist fingerprinting turned on.

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • C.cazabon@mindly.social
    Oct 28, 2026, 7:12 AM

    @Cal

    It doesn't require 3rd-party cookies to work, which I presume is what you mean?

    I'm using Firefox, with all privacy features cranked up, and uBlock Origin and EFF Privacy Badger. If both sites are under the control of the same party, they can make calls to each other.

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • ReemtReemt@woof.group
    Oct 29, 2026, 10:24 AM

    @cazabon since you said you’re curious to hear from the EU/EEA: Went to Amazon.de and signed into my German account. Went to IMDB.com. Wasn’t signed in automatically. Tapped “Anmelden”/sign in. Was asked if I wanted to use an Amazon, IMDB, Google or Apple account.

    I’d say you’re right, nothing happens without consent here.

    💬 0🔄 1⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 1
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 3🔄 0⭐ 2
  • OffbeatmammalOffbeatmammal@mastodon.social
    Oct 27, 2026, 10:56 PM

    @retrosponge @cazabon what sucks is IMDB is largely built on contributions already, and Amazon just monetize it... Including charging for their API now. There are some alternatives but mostly lack the completeness of IMDB so get less use (catch-22)

    💬 1🔄 1⭐ 0
  • Christmas Spongeretrosponge@kind.social
    Oct 27, 2026, 10:58 PM

    @Offbeatmammal @cazabon I am old enough to remember using the IMDB before they bought it. Back when I first got internet access in 1994 I had an IMDB client on my Amiga.

    Like everything else a big corporation buys, the enshitification is strong.

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 1
  • OffbeatmammalOffbeatmammal@mastodon.social
    Oct 27, 2026, 11:03 PM

    @retrosponge @cazabon same! They left it alone for quite a while, but the enshittification seems to be snowballing across most of their stuff (Alexa makes me sad). I remember meetings with the IMDB folks (I worked in the Kindle building in Seattle and they were just across the road) and they seems like a good team back then, but I imagine long gone, along with their principles

    💬 0🔄 1⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • C.cazabon@mindly.social
    Oct 28, 2026, 1:57 AM

    @neontapir

    themoviedb.org ?

    Owned by Tivo, and they claim an irrevocable royalty-free all-permissions license to everything you contribute, including the right to sublicense it to anyone else. And also including the right to use it to train "AI" or license it to companies who will.

    So not much of an improvement there.

    > B. Your License to Us.
    > By making a Contribution to this Site, You grant us an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive
    > [...] fully-paid, royalty-free [...], sublicensable (so that we can distribute Your Contributions
    > to third parties, regardless of whether through the Site, the Services, through our other
    > products, or through other sites or products offered by our affiliates), worldwide [...]
    > license to use, modify, create derivative works of, publicly perform, publicly display,
    > reproduce, and distribute Your Contribution in connection with the Site, the Services, other
    > websites and businesses, or the promotion thereof in any media formats and through
    > any media channels now known or hereafter devised, including training or validating a
    > machine learning or artificial intelligence system using Your Contribution, or including
    > Your Contribution in a data set containing TMDB Content to another person or entity for
    > such training or validation.

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 1
  • C.cazabon@mindly.social
    Oct 28, 2026, 2:08 AM

    @schm43cky

    TMDB is no better than IMDB; see my other reply about it, its owner, and their IP TOS.

    💬 1🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • C.cazabon@mindly.social
    Oct 28, 2026, 2:45 AM

    @llanero24

    Letterboxd is, unless I very much misunderstand it, just another proprietary commercial service.

    They don't just claim a non-exclusive license to anything you add to their data - they claim absolute ownership of it, meaning you can't even use it in future without their permission.

    So they're no better than IMDB or TMDB, and quite possibly worse.

    I'm also not looking for "a social experience". I want a data reference for movies and TV shows, that's all. I don't expect a dictionary or encyclopedia to be a "social experience".

    💬 1🔄 0⭐ 0
  • ElGranjllanero24@social.mollejuo.com
    Oct 28, 2026, 6:14 PM

    @cazabon Fair enough. At the moment, Letterbox allows export (via CSV) of my movie viewing history. That's enough for me.

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • DarkrouxDarkroux@troet.cafe
    Oct 27, 2026, 10:19 PM

    @cazabon Please Jeff, I can only cancel my subscription once, you can stop giving me even more reasons...

    💬 0🔄 1⭐ 0
  • AskPippa🇨🇦AskPippa@c.im
    Oct 27, 2026, 10:22 PM

    @cazabon Sigh. In related (old) news, I'm not thrilled that one has to be logged into a gmail account just to view most YouTube videos.

    💬 1🔄 0⭐ 0
  • C.cazabon@mindly.social
    Oct 27, 2026, 10:50 PM

    @AskPippa

    That is really odd. I'm in Canada, and I'm not logged into any Google services - I don't even have a Gmail account - but I can watch 99% of YouTube videos without issue. On the YouTube site, or embedded in pages on other sites.

    I'm using Firefox with max privacy settings, uBlock Origin, and EFF Privacy Badger installed and enabled for YouTube (and almost every other site).

    💬 1🔄 0⭐ 0
  • AskPippa🇨🇦AskPippa@c.im
    Oct 27, 2026, 11:00 PM

    @cazabon Really odd. I've got pretty much the same set-up. Firefox with Privacy Badger, and DDG. Oh, might be the VPN?

    💬 1🔄 0⭐ 0
  • C.cazabon@mindly.social
    Oct 27, 2026, 11:02 PM

    @AskPippa

    I bet that's it. A lot of the AI scraping happens through VPNs, and Google definitely want to stop their "AI" competitors from being able to generate videos to compete with YouTube.

    💬 1🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 0xDECAFBADslyborg@ohai.social
    Oct 28, 2026, 6:04 AM

    @cazabon @AskPippa They just want to show monetizable ads. Gemini itself claims it cannot process Youtube video links to generate a transcript if the video doesn't have one, which is lol, it was trained on all of them.

    @FreeTube is your friend, Google breaks it frequently, but they’ve kept up the fight.

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • Yo, Blondie!Tarheel@theatl.social
    Oct 27, 2026, 10:36 PM

    @cazabon bummer. I've always found it so useful for when I need to cite something. But no more! I didn't realize that's who I was dealing with. Thank you for this!

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 1⭐ 1
  • Nazonazokiyoubinbou@urusai.social
    Oct 28, 2026, 12:58 AM

    @cazabon I was already starting to feel like IMDB was pretty much fully cooked at this point. I guess that's that. It's not even safe to use outside of a privacy browser.

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 1⭐ 0
  • MacGeek27flybynight@techhub.social
    Oct 28, 2026, 1:12 AM

    @cazabon check out CallSheet! It’s like IMDB… if IMDB didn’t suck. Totally worth the subscription!

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 1⭐ 0
  • Jamienotthatoxford@mastodon.social
    Oct 28, 2026, 1:31 AM

    @cazabon moral of the story: delete Amazon account and stop using them. Problem solved!

    💬 1🔄 0⭐ 0
  • C.cazabon@mindly.social
    Oct 28, 2026, 2:06 AM

    @notthatoxford

    Unfortunately, that is not a universally-applicable solution. Not everyone has the same choices available to them.

    💬 1🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 1🔄 0⭐ 0
  • C.cazabon@mindly.social
    Oct 28, 2026, 6:13 PM

    @notthatoxford

    Amazon has been around for more than three decades at this point. The retail, service, and cloud-computing environments have changed vastly in that time. Many choices that existed before no longer do.

    As an example, I have a hobby that requires purchase of specialized stuff. In 1994, when Amazon was formed, there were three specialist suppliers in my city where I could walk in and either buy that stuff off the shelf, or have them order it for me in a reasonable time.

    The industry supplying this stuff has changed greatly in the intervening 32 years. All three of those businesses in my city have closed; they're gone. There is literally nowhere to buy this stuff locally. In fact, I only know of one place within 1500 km where it can be purchased (it's about 700 km away). I have to order everything online. Amazon is one of very, very few places I can order from - I try to use the others when I can, but sometimes that's not possible.

    If there was one single lesson I wish people in general would learn, it is that "Not everyone lives exactly as you do; their environment, situation, and opportunities may vary greatly from your own experience, and as a result, they make different choices than you do - or that you wish they would".

    I see the results of people *not* considering this All The Damned Time.

    #circumstances #environment #opportunities #different #MileInTheirShoes #WalkAMileInTheirShoes #choices #empathy

    💬 1🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 1🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • Steven Hoefertroublewithwords@wandering.shop
    Oct 28, 2026, 2:13 AM

    @cazabon Even if you log out of this stealth IMDB account, if your browser is logged in Amazon, and you visit IMDB, it will log you back in without a prompt.

    I’m guessing someone got a huge raise because they made the IMDB user numbers go up.

    💬 1🔄 0⭐ 0
  • C.cazabon@mindly.social
    Oct 28, 2026, 2:22 AM

    @troublewithwords

    Undoubtedly re: the raise.

    I deleted the IMDB account, and it hasn't logged me back in, so that's something.

    💬 2🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 1⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • Dave VK4TDIvk4tdi@mastodon.au
    Oct 28, 2026, 5:45 AM

    @cazabon And that's another company that needs to get its own Firefox jail/container to live in. Adding it to the ToDo list.

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • Ryan Paazryanpaaz@mstdn.social
    Oct 28, 2026, 3:20 PM

    @cazabon While I’m sure it’s driven by ad revenue, it’s also likely a response to bot scraping which seems to be a real thing, especially for information dense sites these days. But I’d have just rather they put access to IMDb behind an account then. And then been upset about that and hope tmdb.org picks up the slack. But these bot scraping issues need to be fixed.

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 1⭐ 0
  • Perrin42Perrin42@mastodon.social
    Oct 28, 2026, 3:38 PM

    @cazabon

    Is that why I got the random "new login to IMDB detected" email? Considering I never made an IMDB account.

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • Noodlemaznoodlemaz@mstdn.games
    Oct 28, 2026, 6:19 PM

    @cazabon LinkedIn and Google do this shit as well
    Logged into google account and click a Linkedin URL?
    Boom, LI account for you that you didn't ask forwith your full name if google has that, before you can hit cancel. Twats

    Then it takes them a month to scrub it

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0