Things were never really that bad over there, and the forums were one of the main reasons to use IMDb.
shareSome of the DC and Marvel movie forums were real cesspits. The FG board was pretty rough as well.
shareDepends on who you ask. Probably a little truth to every answer.
shareA lot of people aren't aware that IMDb was taken over by Amazon back in 1998. There were a couple of theories suggested by posters right before the boards shut down:
• Amazon didn't like the negative comments about movies because they were afraid it would hurt their sales of DVDs. (Yet members can still rate and write reviews of films. I don't get this one.)
• There was too much troll activity and it was too expensive to hire more moderators. (Come on! A multi-billion-dollar corporation like Amazon couldn't afford moderators...?!) I never believed this one either.
We will probably never know the true reason.
This is the reason Yahoo gave for suspending their comments section.
Our goal is to create a safe and engaging place for users to connect over interests and passions. In order to improve our community experience, we are temporarily suspending article commenting.
Makes me chuckle because if you can't take Internet comments with a grain of salt, you probably shouldn't be reading them.
I think they didn't want to commit resources to moderating, which is necessary with so many people commenting. I moderated a forum back in the day, and the amount of complaints (and even a threatened lawsuit) were ridiculous.
shareThe host of a forum cannot be sued for what other members of the forum do. I think people just complain too much, you have an ignore feature so use it.
shareMONEY
sharepolitics
sharePolitical debate was rife on there. People from many sides would sometimes make cogent points in the middle of the shout-storm. Can't have anyone they disagree with change anyone's mind on something. It's not like they owe the forum service to anyone. They didn't want to become known as a place where Trump supporters hang out. I think this played at least a little bit of a role in the cancellation if not larger.
Similar case with Yahoo but more likely that they tired of their horribly written articles being torn apart ritually in the comments. Yahoo has the worst writers on the internet.