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Letterboxd Is Up for Sale, and A24, Sony and the New York Times Are Bidding

76 points · 38 comments · crossroadsguy

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Computer0 · 1790367469 · focus · HN ↗
I use <a href="https://movielens.org/" rel="nofollow">https://movielens.org/ and it is ran by the University of Minnesota.
1. PyWoody · 1790371684 · focus · HN ↗
  This looks almost too good to be true! Thank you for sharing. I'm going to migrate my 600+ library over tonight.
clayhacks · 1790367581 · focus · HN ↗
Is there an ATproto or activity pub version of letterboxd? I like A24, but not sure how much I trust Sony or the NYT to run it reasonably
1. rurban · 1790368901 · focus · HN ↗
  A24 is the biggest cheater on Letterboxd, buying 5 star raters en masse. Warner is not much better. Sony is ok.
  1. madeofpalk · 1790371291 · focus · HN ↗
    What 5 start ratings have they purchased?
    rurban · 1790404691 · focus · HN ↗
    Hundreds. Basically all the films they submit to a major festival.
  2. Slow_Hand · 1790381657 · focus · HN ↗
    Source?
    rurban · 1790404606 · focus · HN ↗
    My research in doing <a href="http://cannes-ratings.org" rel="nofollow">http://cannes-ratings.org The cheat detection logic is not public, but reliable
    lentil_soup · 1790406435 · focus · HN ↗
    Can you expand on this? I don't understand what you mean. You're saying they buy people to vote on the letterboxd?
    rurban · 1790410969 · focus · HN ↗
    Exactly. There are dozens of people giving only 5 stars to a certain companies films.
    rurban · 1790411635 · focus · HN ↗
    And after 10 years of this going on, they finally did something against it. Unfortunately the wrong thing. They don't show pre-screening ratings anymore, amassing the cheater ratings then to the public on the Premiere day. Pretty hard to catch them this way. They should catch and block them before.
    imdb had the very same problem before, but nobody trusts imdb ratings anyway.
    metacritic and rotten-tomatoes don't need cheaters en masse, they just need to pay one or two popular "influencers".
    r721 · 1790428240 · focus · HN ↗
    RateYourMusic has a great algorithm I think - they assign rating weights to users depending on how their rating distribution looks like, so anybody who rates everything with 5/5 would have zero weight.
    <a href="https://rateyourmusic.com/wiki/RYM:Weighting+FAQ" rel="nofollow">https://rateyourmusic.com/wiki/RYM:Weighting+FAQ
2. zoenolan · 1790368951 · focus · HN ↗
  <a href="https://popfeed.social/" rel="nofollow">https://popfeed.social/ on ATproto
535188B17C93743 · 1790367631 · focus · HN ↗
Can't wait for the enshittification of Letterboxd.
Dear God, don't let Amazon do what it did to Goodreads here.
1. crossroadsguy · 1790402046 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
DarkNova6 · 1790367792 · focus · HN ↗
Amazing. So Imdb 2.0 has become Imdb 2.0.
rdmuser · 1790368299 · focus · HN ↗
Having such a high profile film rating site be potentially owned by a film studio has serious conflict of interest issues. Same goes for amazon buying imdb and they've already used that to adjust scores for at least one film they released because of bad reviews. I'm happy to see this get some attention here after my submission didn't because the potential implications of this purchase are big.
1. aucisson_masque · 1790371672 · focus · HN ↗
  > Same goes for amazon buying imdb and they've already used that to adjust scores for at least one film they released
  Any source on that ? I found nothing serious, just reddit and Facebook post. No one serious is reporting on it.
  1. rdmuser · 1790372652 · focus · HN ↗
    Ah sorry I should have linked from the start instead of being kind of handwavy so people can make their own call on the event I was thinking about. It was in reaction to review bombing of The Little Mermaid.
    <a href="https://www.avclub.com/the-little-mermaid-imdb-changes-ratings-review-bomb-1850492554" rel="nofollow">https://www.avclub.com/the-little-mermaid-imdb-changes-ratin...
    I'm actually pretty fond of the general concept of smoothing out most review bombing but the fact that imdb ran ages without this feature, they only implemented it when one of their films had issues, that they aren't open about the specifics and stand to quietly benefit from manipulations like this has me petty uncomfortable.
  2. madeofpalk · 1790373123 · focus · HN ↗
    The problem with Amazon owning IMDB, or A24 potentially owning Letterboxd, is not that they would screw with it, but that every move they make will be put through that lease. Even with NYT being the owners I’m sure there would be the regular ‘drama’ of whatever woke/anti-woke influence they may have over it.
  3. rdmuser · 1790373335 · focus · HN ↗
    Ah actually unfortunately I think I made a mistake there so I apologize for that. Should have double checked instead of speaking from memory. I believe I was thinking of The Little Mermaid change but it seems like that wasn't their film. Sorry!
    <a href="https://www.avclub.com/the-little-mermaid-imdb-changes-ratings-review-bomb-1850492554" rel="nofollow">https://www.avclub.com/the-little-mermaid-imdb-changes-ratin...
    UqWBcuFx6NV4r · 1790375478 · focus · HN ↗
    > Should have double checked instead of speaking from memory.
    Claude :)
    rdmuser · 1790379116 · focus · HN ↗
    Oh is that a claude thing? Definitively a false positive in this case and I don't care much for ai in general. Pretty damn awkward that I might need to memorize ai text styles even though I don't use them so I don't accidentally write the same way as one of them.
2. dtagames · 1790389381 · focus · HN ↗
  The corollary is that when the product gets this big and this good (it's terrific), someone is going to buy it.
  It's a sign that the developers built a product with demand.
mpalmer · 1790368377 · focus · HN ↗
Truly, everything good gets milked dry for someone's exit. I know that's usually celebrated in a forum like this, but is it possible things are just a bit out of balance?
ChrisArchitect · 1790368824 · focus · HN ↗
Referenced NYT piece (unlocked): <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/business/media/letterboxd-sale-sony-a24-nyt.html?unlocked_article_code=1.D1E.sLGQ.GgxPtcYpAZvO&smid=url-share" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/business/media/letterboxd...
Related background on the state of growth there from a few months ago:
The Rise and (Potential) Fall of Letterboxd
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48463894">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48463894
thrownaway561 · 1790369272 · focus · HN ↗
so glad I move over to TMDB the other day. Letterboxd layout is the worst.
sajithdilshan · 1790370215 · focus · HN ↗
If it's bought by A24 or Sony that's absolutely gonna be a conflict on interest and I cannot imagine the platform would ever be impartial for the reviews of their movies. It NYT buys it, then it would be turned into a woke nonsense project. I guess all good things must come to an end.
1. nimih · 1790370892 · focus · HN ↗
  part of the charm of letterboxd is that its median reviewer is far more woke than every NYT contributor combined, imo.
hotsalad · 1790370344 · focus · HN ↗
Heh, the name makes it sound like a daemon.
service letterboxd enable; service letterboxd start
dgellow · 1790370634 · focus · HN ↗
Damn, that asking price is insane
reticulates · 1790371290 · focus · HN ↗
I continue to be baffled by this sale. Letterboxd was acquired by Tiny 3 years ago, Tiny’s entire premise is that they hold for the long term. Selling after 3 years is not long term. I don’t understand why Tiny would undermine their raison d’etre unless it’s because the founders (who retain a minority stake) are pushing for it.
Tiny just recently updated their website to emphasize how long they’ve owned each property which is especially confusing given they’re now offloading things <a href="https://tiny.com/companies/letterboxd" rel="nofollow">https://tiny.com/companies/letterboxd
“Tiny's model — long-term ownership, founder autonomy, no pressure to flip the company in three to five years — fit naturally.”
…?
1. OzzyB · 1790371627 · focus · HN ↗
  so you _believed_ them -- that is the only takeaway from this.
  1. UqWBcuFx6NV4r · 1790375401 · focus · HN ↗
    The much more pertinent point is that it is counter to their apparent track record.
    simulator5g · 1790395951 · focus · HN ↗
    Investment firms are apparently not immune to enshittification
2. Grombobulous · 1790372647 · focus · HN ↗
  I imagine that in life and business there’s no such thing as a decision that is never regrettable. I guess it just didn’t work out.
3. dtagames · 1790389294 · focus · HN ↗
  Three years is long term in the tech and VC world.
  At a $300M sale, the project achieved its goal and it's time to exit.
kkotak · 1790371758 · focus · HN ↗
Why not $3B? or $30B, even?
kennywinker · 1790374127 · focus · HN ↗
America hasn’t had real antitrust law for >40 years. It should be impossible for a review site to be purchased by a company that makes things reviewed on that site. Reagan era neoliberalism defanged antitrust, and brought on the corpo-hellscape we live in today.

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