Goodreads was acquired and is kept on life support to funnel traffic to Amazon and keep competition for online book reviews from impacting the Amazon sales. It’s not clear that anyone even works on the site anymore, it’s a zombie.
The site is built on outdated technological infrastructure, which made the cost of overhauling and updating it a challenge that was ultimately not worth it for the e-commerce giant, according to former employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Meanwhile, limited manual content moderation and a lack of protective features allow users to engage in targeted harassment known as “review bombing” — behavior that has resulted in the cancellation of books and their authors.
... Former employees said Amazon seemed happy to mine Goodreads for its user-generated data and otherwise let it limp along with limited resources. In Amazon’s more than 20-year history, the company has made dozens of acquisitions, and it is not unusual for it to try to cheaply acquire properties in markets that it wants to dominate, only to let them languish. ...
Goodreads “hasn’t been all that well maintained, or updated, or kept up with what you would expect from social communities or apps in 2023,” said Jane Friedman, a publishing industry consultant. “It does feel like Amazon bought it and then abandoned it.”
This sentence in the article made me laugh. "The awfulness of the user experience is surprising, given Amazon’s purchase of Goodreads in 2013." No, no, it's not a surprise at all. Both Amazon's general track record with acquisitions and then their specific reasons for buying Goodreads.
