📚 Time to switch to BookWyrm
EDIT: Fairly incredible that this article should appear on WaPo, which is owned by amazon.
Does anyone else ignore the reviews and social media aspect of Goodreads and only use it to organize their data?
You might like StoryGraph better for that. I switched from Goodreads because I got sick of all the social aspects of the site. I just want to keep track of what I’ve read and update it so I get a Spotify Wrapped like experience for books—StoryGraph offers that.
When StoryGraph gets its api (on the roadmap). That’ll be delightful.
I’m still bummed GoodReads discontinued their official API. (They have an undocumented GraphQL one driving parts of their site you can use. Ish.)
This would imply having an account on something owned by Amazon. No, thanks.
I’ve been using StoryGraph since it came around and really enjoy it. I’ve looked at BookWyrm, but I haven’t considered switching yet.
The article mentions the WaPo connection to Amazon and its board, as they should, but I’m surprised to see this particular topic there, too.
This particular paragraph is disingenuous in its characterization of what’s going on with Reddit, though:
There was also a concern that any major changes to the platform could scare people away. One former employee compared Goodreads to Reddit, an 18-year-old internet forum where users are revolting because of modifications to the site. “People feel like they can’t anger the community,” the former employee said.
Honest question: how does StoryGraph value your privacy? Being based in the US and being for free suggests that user data could be the real product. Otherwise it obviously looks really nice and I would love to use their stats.
Not sure what she gets from it, but my partner pays for Storygraph because of how bad Goodreads has become.
https://app.thestorygraph.com/privacy But, what private info you are worried about liked/disliked books linked to a email?
Read the privacy statement but couldn’t figure out how to interpet it. I’m not worried about it that much but would like to avoid further feeding into big data. Not sure how, but the books I read could easily tell a lot about me.
The feature I liked most in goodreads, was that it would send you a monthly email with “new books by authors you’ve read”. It would send it at the start of the month, which was not actionable, but if you’d just wait a few months reading it, it was easy to see that LE Modesitt Jr finished another book in the series I enjoyed.
They stopped sending that, now it’s a “here are some books we want you to show some interest in”.
I got a bookwyrm account, and apart from not knowing all the books I’ve read, they also can’t tell me what books have come out recently, by authors I enjoyed in the past.
I’d think that would be a basic part of any book collection tool.
They stopped sending that, now it’s a “here are some books we want you to show some interest in”.
Sounds like a great example of enshittification.
Stage 2, I think?
I’ve been on BookWyrm for a bit and I quite like it. I’ve actually written my first reviews (something I never did on gr).
To be honest, I freaking love bookwyrm so much. One of my favorite ways to burn time online is to find books that come across my feed that are missing info like cover art, description, etc. and to fill it all in. I’ve spent hours doing this and it feels so cool, like I’m actually part of maintaining the system.
Also, Ive found that the people on Bookwyrm tend to like books that I really love that are also potentially kind of niche, so Ive found a lot of really great book recommendations that I never would have found from Goodreads or an algorithm.
Is it possible to merge books? Was just looking around, and they’re are like 10 entries (not editions) for many of the books I looked up, and so the reviews are scattered.
The article is a bit strange. Two different things are mixed there - goodreads as such, and generic social media issues (unreasoable dislikes, paid reviews etc). I like goodreads and do not know if there is an alternative. However, the site and app are outdated as hell, and miss some obvious features. However, if I understood the article correctly, these issues were there before Amazon, Amazon simply did not invest in the site enough to solve these issue.
https://literal.club is another alternative.
