Re:A harassment campaign on Goodreads
by varenc on Monday January 06, 2020 @05:41PM
(#21974301)
Their Facebook integration used to be downright deceitful. It was very easy to spam all of your friends that way. After they did that I changed my Goodreads account's name to "Chris 'Goodreads spammed all my friends'" and then I discovered that having an unusually long name breaks their design in multiple places. [1]
Besides the dark growth patterns, overall Goodreads feels like a clunky product suffering from feature bloat and poor usability. Unfortunately, because of the network effects and the Kindle integration, it's very hard for a competitor to get off the ground.
(Facebook's API has been locked down in the meantime and Goodreads now only has access to your FB friends that also linked Goodreads...which they use to send a friend requests to each one)
Besides the dark growth patterns, overall Goodreads feels like a clunky product suffering from feature bloat and poor usability. Unfortunately, because of the network effects and the Kindle integration, it's very hard for a competitor to get off the ground.
[1] screenshot: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xh4rr6mvey1lbfh/Screenshot%202020-... (it's been like this for at least a year)
(Facebook's API has been locked down in the meantime and Goodreads now only has access to your FB friends that also linked Goodreads...which they use to send a friend requests to each one)