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@Kristin​ Please see Michelle’s reply above. 

@Col_Needham​ @Michelle​ 

1. That does not answer my question as to why you do this "undercover", and don't announce it like you usually do with other changes.

2. Also 

"This extra step is part of our ongoing effort to keep IMDb's reviews a space for genuine, human voices."

Does not explain why people have to log inn to READ, is it a big problem with computers reading reviews?

3.

As mentioned in my comment that was deleted on the original post, IMDb users on the IMDb forum on Reddit are RAGING at the moment. 

@Col_Needham​ We're still waiting for a proper, comprehensive explanation. This will simply not do. Apart from just a commercial enterprise, IMDb has become the most comprehensive and authoritative worldwide media database anywhere, and as such by now an essential part of our collective cultural heritage. It's vitally important to protect its status.

I would speculate that there are worries about folks posting reviews generated by a transformer architecture software trained on data collected from reviews posted from other accounts, who might be employing "word calculator" aides to write theirs as well, which just contributes to model collapse. By placing all of this behind the registration wall, it becomes easier to track which review audiences are entirely-manual, partially-manual partially-automated and entirely-automated, even entirely-automated in "artificially-intelligent" way, and it also gives whatever deep-learning models being run by IMDb developers a competitive edge of some kind.

@jeorj_euler​ Thank you! Yes, this sounds very plausible indeed, but why not be open about it? 

Still, as I pointed out above, I would really hate to see important features like these go behind walls on IMDb and similar sites. What's next? All IMDb Trivia and Lists inaccessible? Wikipedia on registration only? Would we have to register everywhere we look for information?

I've always believed that investing in constant, human monitoring (I guess now with the aid of A.I. as an indicative, though not decisive tool) would be the best way to go to keep sites safe and relevant. 

@jeorj_euler​ You are still conflating issues here. The pushback here is against credentialed viewing of IMDB data, not posting. They are (and should be) completely different permission models.

Regardless of "conflating" issues, I do understand that the here pushback against credentialed viewing of IMDB data.

That part might be described as a no-brainer.

Somehow the situation is so severe that the IMDb site authorities don't even want to risk an anonymous bot being able to view IMDb data. Technically it could be brokered (and probably already is being brokered), but in such a case, it might not be difficult to figure out through which accounts the brokering is being facilitated, and to deliberately compromise the integrity of the data being viewed via those accounts. Which leads me to wonder if the way the IMDb website shows up is identical (to begin with lately) in terms of content, regardless of which account is signed in, where the accessing device is geographically located or which operating system and browser are being used. For all I know, some things (important enough things) are tailored to the disparate biases of the viewing audience, across demographics or even individually. So, in other words, IMDb probably has its own deep learning software, and the IMDb developers might just be trying to protect what it consumes from other bots. Still, this is just speculation on my part.

@jeorj_euler​  There is no need to lean over backwards trying to imagine any reason other than the obvious one.  Previously, it was only if a visitor wanted to add or change information that registering was required. Yes, THAT was in the interest of security and insuring accountability for accurate contributions. But requiring registration just to look at reviews must be the initial stage of an effort to further monetize the site in one way or another.  So far, any visitor to the site can still see credits, background information, photos and trailers. But later they may wall off some of those other things as well. The wider tracking of interaction by registered users will then generate more information about the interests of each as an individual, who will now be personally identifiable to data brokers and marketers.  This may also be a trial balloon to measure how badly people want to keep using IMDb overall. If that's the case, then it could lead them to actually begin charging us just to see much of what used to be free.

Indeed, and I've made observations in the past about the general pattern of how features are removed or modified, one feature at a time, as part of a broad plan for the site. If the bit just concerning viewing of reviews is part of more general plan to do similar with the whole site, I'd think it has to do with the "zero clicks" paranoia that the maintainers of some major sites have, such as when a large number of people don't bother to even visit a website because what search engine summarizer shows about a topic is perceived as sufficient by such a large number of people.

With regard to the bigger picture, we have for reference the way Instagram, Facebook and Twitter have trended toward being increasingly walled off to viewing by unregistered visitors, meanwhile some platforms that are fundamentally walled off are beginning to or at least planning to implement age verification "to comply with the law", usually European Union stuff that just winds up being imposed globally.