SOS: Serious Overload of Series discussion

Did everyone get this message from TPTB? I’m not a fan 🤨

Hello Goodreads Member,

In the coming weeks, we will be making some updates to how messaging works on Goodreads.

What's Changing?
• Direct messages between individual members will no longer be available
• Images and external links will no longer be supported in messages

While direct messages between individual members are no longer available, you can still access your past messages from your inbox, Group moderators can still send broadcast messages to their group members, and you can still send group invitations to your Goodreads friends. All other public interactions, such as writing and responding to book reviews, remains unchanged.

-The Goodreads Team

Discussions are running wild about this pretty much everywhere at the moment.

Apparently it's GRs way of battling spam... because that obviously only happens in pms and not across the board with fake profiles publicly posting nonsense in tons of groups....

It's ridiculous...

Sooo ridiculous. Everything they’ve done lately “to combat spam/mers” has punished longtime loyal GR users, groups hard hit, too. They just don’t wanna or can’t find a way to address the creation of fake spam accounts, so everyone suffers b/c of it.

The only real time I see spammers is on the library threads.

The most watched threads, so the threads that get flagged almost the moment they post.

It's going to be annoying for those playing Bingo that are late realising the game has started, those with questions for the Mods, or those wishing to drop out of the game.

In another group, someone listed the petition started for this

https://www.change.org/p/urge-goodrea...

Yeah, I get that they want to combat spammers... but this ain't the way... shame 😢

It’s a cheap fix. Amazon doesn’t spend money on us GRers if they can help it. :(

Another hurdle for BSB gaming, for sure 😐

Especially the wanting to reach out to mods part via pm is annoying.

If you are playing a team challenge and there are issues you do not want to air out in public without causing even more drama (it's been known to happen after all..), a private message was the best solution.

You can't start creating mini groups with every single person you might want to talk to.


It's funny though that they're using a pm to alert members of this when it is exactly the feature they want to remove :-p

I got a PM & an email.

I really didn't appreciate either of them!!

Eldarwen wrote: "It's funny though that they're using a pm to alert members of this when it is exactly the feature they want to remove :-p"

That was my first thought, too, Eldarwen. Idiots!

Sandra wrote: "I got a PM & an email.

I really didn't appreciate either of them!!"

Same; I got the email this morning.

Very much same!


Members wishing to connect with me privately can reach me at seriesoverload@gmail.com. I will just block anyone who is obviously spammy. Aside from that we'll have to see how it goes and do like we've always done when they've made asinine changes that make grouplife more difficult -- find our best workaround.