In a social media landscape dominated by obnoxious ads, algorithms, and AI, Letterboxd has stood firm as a cult favorite.
The app—which acts as a digital diary for users to log and leave reviews of any movie they watch—has been described by a Letterboxd spokesperson as “less a social media platform, more a community.” It’s resisted adding the infinite scroll feature that now seems omnipresent online, instead letting users curate their own feeds of friends and popular reviewers.
But news that a controlling stake in Letterboxd could be going up for sale has users worried that their online safe haven could go the way of other resold apps like X.
Canadian holding company Tiny, which acquired a 60% stake in Letterboxd in 2023, is looking to sell its majority share of the platform, Semafor reported. Potential buyers include Versant, the parent company of CNBC and MS NOW, and the Hollywood newsletter The Ankler.
Under new ownership, Letterboxd could transform in any number of ways—and the platform’s current users aren’t excited about any of them.
Social media catastrophizes
When news of the potential sale hit social media, Letterboxd’s avid users were immediately up in arms. One user called Letterboxd “our last vanguard of good social media.”
A common anxiety among Letterboxd users was that the app would get sold to some billionaire who couldn’t care less about the platform’s mission of offering “a single place to showcase your life in film.” Many clearly had flashbacks to the infamous 2022 sale of Twitter to Elon Musk, which transformed a once-beloved social site into a much-maligned platform ridden with monetized blue checkmarks and reply guys summoning Grok under every post.
“Letterboxd cannot go to one of the billionaires,” that user continued. “I can’t do it. I can’t take it.”
“If some corporation buys Letterboxd and I start getting hit with 40 unskippable ads every hour, I’m deleting the app and never touching it again,” wrote another user. “We finally had an app that actually improved our lives, man.”
One poster summed up the potential sale with a Letterboxd-style review: just half a star out of five.
Others reflected on Letterboxd’s impact on the film industry, including its fostering of love for classic and arthouse films among young people, with the biggest cohort of the app’s users being between 18 and 25 years old as of 2024.
“To the degree that we have a thriving culture of cinema, it’s largely because of this website,” one user wrote. “It’s one of the few things monied interests haven’t ruined. Selling it would be a disaster.”
Reading the fine print
Though Letterboxd users were quick to catastrophize, a sale of the app might not be such a disaster after all. When Semafor broke the news of the potential sale, it noted that cofounder Matthew Buchanan retains veto rights to any potential buyer, meaning he could keep Letterboxd’s mission in place.
When the company sold a controlling stake to Tiny in 2023, Buchanan told Letterboxd users in a blog post that “aside from the ownership change, and in line with Tiny’s core operating values, very little else will change.”
Theoretically, a new sale would maintain that philosophy and leave what people love about the platform intact. But until the ink has dried, the future of Letterboxd remains up in the air.
Neither Letterboxd nor Tiny have replied to Fast Company’s request for comment.