🔍 Myth Busters

Trakt Questions & Help
1

We’ve seen a lot of discussion about Trakt across Reddit and the forums. Some of it is fair criticism, some of it comes from frustration, and some of it is based on incorrect assumptions.
Here are a few common myths we’d like to clarify.

  1. “Trakt is preparing to be sold.”
    There is no plan to sell Trakt. Full stop.
    The current changes are about future-proofing the platform, not dressing it up for an acquisition.

  2. “Trakt is selling user data.”
    This is a common misconception. Trakt does not sell user data and generates 100% of its revenue from optional VIP memberships. We also removed all third-party ads a long time ago to improve both privacy and user experience.

  3. “Trakt is losing money due to VIP cancellations.”
    VIP memberships and revenue are growing at healthy, double-digit annual rates. This allows us to keep Trakt sustainable, independent, and free for the majority of users.

  4. “Trakt is no longer free.”
    Despite new fair usage limits, Trakt remains a freemium service. You do not need a subscription for basic tracking and core features.

  5. “Trakt is locking things behind VIP to force upgrades.”
    VIP unlocks power-user features. Core tracking, discovery, and sharing remain free, as they always have.

  6. “Trakt is shoving things down our throats.”
    No one is forced to use Trakt. No one is forced to subscribe to VIP. And no one is forced into any feature. Everything we build is meant to add value, even if we do not always get it right on the first iteration.

  7. “Everything is an experiment or nothing is planned.”
    Most changes are part of a multi-step roadmap. Some things ship incrementally so we can validate them with real usage data, but that does not mean there is no plan.

  8. “Trakt doesn’t care about long-time users.”
    Long-time users are the reason Trakt exists. At the same time, rebuilding a platform that is more than 10 years old means making decisions that prioritize long-term health over short-term comfort.

  9. “Feedback is ignored unless it’s positive.”
    Critical feedback is often the most useful, especially when it is specific and actionable. What we struggle to act on is abuse, personal attacks, or vague “everything sucks” posts.

  10. “Trakt is removing my favorite features.”
    We’re rebuilding the platform from the ground up, prioritizing the most widely used features first. Some niche or legacy features will return later, and some may evolve, but nothing is being removed just because.

6 Likes
3

I get your points and I also get the “why” of what you’re doing. Old platforms need overhauls from time to time.

What annoys me (and it seems like a lot of other people as well) is the “how” of that progress. Asking for and getting feedback since beta and rolling it out anyway while just having hiked up the price just feels like “they are not listening”.

Many have set workflows and use Trakt a certain way - which was impossible for many people when certain features were completely taken away with no replacement. A “it will come back” or even a vague “it might come back at some point” doesn’t help at all. What are we supposed to do in the meantime? Not do the things we were used to and destroying our own working systems because the functionality is gone? So I can’t put seasons on lists anymore even if I track them by year I’ve watched them because in history it only shows episodes and the whole series? I can’t use an empty search anymore to discover what my streaming service has to offer and filter them for my taste? Especially if taken away features are among the ones I used the most and paid my VIP for with no knowledge of if or when I will get them back, it’s not surprising to be annoyed at best and angry at most. Feeling cheated out of things we paid for for no understandable reason other than “system is old, we need to rebuild it”.

If that is the case, then it is our right to ask: Why now? When it is obvious to everyone (including you at Trakt), that the new experience (which you purposefully labeled “Lite” as in “less than before”) is not ready to be used as V2 was. Nobody is against a V3, but we don’t want to loose out on everything V2 has to offer and we love for a new version. Especially when a lot of the features in V2 came as wishes from the community itself. Why not implement the features first and then push it out for everyone?

You have the data on what features are used and still chose to push V3 without many of those features that it seems like a lot of people do use and will miss. YOU might have a roadmap, but WE have broken workflows and uncertainty of the future look and features of Trakt. You also have the data on how many users still use V2 even after V3 was made default. For how many V3 did not work so that they searched for the setting to change it back and continue to use V2.

If you need a new target group to reach, then make the service modular and let people choose in their settings which features to opt-in. It should be easy to implement on a website: Build the website with everything on it and if a user won’t toggle it on, it won’t load. Responsive websites can do a lot. Then the “movie nerds” will be happy with their niche features and the “just want to know what I watched” people won’t be overwhelmed.

That said, as many have mentioned before and still notice while searching for alternative services: Trakt has many features that no other service provides and most likely never will. Everything happening with V3 feels like Trakt going “mainstream” against similar services out there while disappointing the loyal userbase with that move. You have the numbers if this gamble will pay off longterm (or even for now). But by then I suspect you will have lost many who might not ever come back, even if all features return over time.

Lastly: considering your point number 6:

6. “Trakt is shoving things down our throats.”
No one is forced to use Trakt. No one is forced to subscribe to VIP. And no one is forced into any feature. Everything we build is meant to add value, even if we do not always get it right on the first iteration.

Everything you did built on V2 has added value to a lot of users. You did get many things right, they are there and we love them. That is why we are pleading, begging, shouting and screaming to keep this value for us and not take it away. Many tried but from the outside it looked like nobody is listening. Not everybody will be sticking around and many have good reasons not to.

I myself have a few months of VIP left, so I’ll watch closely what will happen. But the current version of V3 won’t work with my setup at all and I also won’t be changing a working system because of lost features. If I am forced to update my iOS app I won’t be able maintain my workflows either. So I fear I might be pushed out for having built a setup with our service that your changes make impossible. We’ll see where this will all end up.

38 Likes
4

#1-5 I’ll partially agree with you.
#6-10 You might want to reconsider your stance.

With all due respect, your reactions like you made there are exactly why there’s so much criticism. Maybe some of it is perception, but the tone and attitude that things aren’t evolving against a majority that’s opposing them is rather insulting to us as the client base. Customers who have seen a 400% in some instances. And one thing that does really hurt your public image, especially from Reddit posts, is the consistency with which users have been silenced from posting here. A move btw that deprives them of even obtaining support from “official” channels.

17 Likes
5

There’s been lots of feedback shared that aren’t personal attacks or abuse. It would probably be worth replying to more of it or cataloging responses to common questions in an index for people to browse. When I look at the New Trakt Feedback thread, there are so many comments in there of people leaving feedback which feel like they’re being ignored, because they’re not being publicly acknowledged. Yes there are comments that are not constructive, but there’s a lot of other comments that are people sharing how the new design doesn’t work for them yet, or why they’re unhappy.

I don’t doubt that you’re reading them, but I know most people don’t feel like what they’re sharing is being read. I know that I shared concerns somewhere about the lack of ratings functionality on the new dashboard, but no where have I seen an acknowledgement of the regression in functionality, and if there’s a plan to bring back ratings.

Basically what I’m saying is that it would be worthwhile acknowledging more of the feedback shared, and create an index of all the responses, so that people can actually see/know that what they write is being read.

12 Likes
10

@kcador as someone who leads a tech consultancy firm, I feel you here. Feedback that’s actually merely hate and not constructive isn’t great to receive, but more importantly, it’s really almost impossible to address.

However, I do find merit in people saying the tone (and then especially yours) is missing the mark for us. These things will contribute to people being unkind because their frustration is fuelled. I just finished reading 💬 New Trakt Feedback and it must be said that I understand why people feel unheard. Your last post is Nov 5th ( 💬 New Trakt Feedback - #232 by kcador ) and since there have been 200 more posts. Are a lot of those posts actionable? Maybe, maybe not. But the silence and the tone of the “big posts” is not helping here. In general, I do not think trying to innovate is an issue. However a lot of the feedback is constructive and real, and so are the worries.

A new post that is supposed to bust myths is only necessary because people (including myself) feel that there is a lack of clear communication. Yes, people are in general really bad with change. In fact, I was part of a Facebook group that was basically a support group for micro-changes. That’s all of us on the spectrum that have a hard time if a button changes a colour, let alone a design completely changes everything. So yeah, there’s always going to be “bring back the old thing” feedback. That said…

Responding to someone’s well-written feedback with: “We are building this from the ground up” or “More platforms were taking into account building this” or “Our statistics show a lot of growth [paraphrasing] therefore this change is welcomed” doesn’t just dismiss the time and effort someone spend into trying to voice their opinion and struggle, but dismisses it as a “why don’t you go away and try to enter one of your body parts into one of your orifices”.

Is that harsh to say? Maybe, but reading particularly your responses in that thread made me pretty sad and defeated.

Finally: I don’t think the design is all bad. It does feel half-assed and not researched. It’s not accessible (which is a problem for myself) and things are hard to find. The UX is far from even tolerable, and this seems, if anything, mostly designed for large mobile phones. If that’s what’s intended I think people will be open to hearing that. But the continuation of “no it’s great, it’s going to be great, watch us” isn’t helping anyone.

If this were to become the only option, and it doesn’t get better, just like other longmembers, I will revoke my membership. Will you cry about it? Probably not. But telling us that you do care about us feels… not aligned with your actions.

27 Likes
11

What we struggle to act on is abuse, personal attacks, or vague “everything sucks” posts.

This is a valid point to some extent, but it’s undermined by the super petty post. There’s something a little poetic about the pinned post in “Questions & Help” offering no real help and only ‘answering’ questions/concerns that are phrased in a way that is very clearly intentionally mocking them.

If you wanted to convey that you listen, you failed

14 Likes
12

Specifically regarding the listening to the user base - is there a list of feedback since V3 that did result in a change of what was planned by yourselves initially?

15 Likes
13

Removal of horizontal scrolling, removable ratings, show posters instead of episode posters in “Continue Watching”, seeing ratings distribution without having to react yourself, (soon) half stars selectable by hovering and others that aren’t implemented yet.

3 Likes
14

“YOU might have a roadmap, but WE have broken workflows and uncertainty of the future look and features of Trakt.”

Completely agree. The roadmap should be available and super easy to find. Google takes me to roadmap.trakt.tv but it seems to be a private server for employees. The product updates marked as roadmap here seem to be entirely what is done not what is coming. My frustration is more out of fear that the big missing features I need won’t come before V2 is gone.

PLEASE LET US SEE AND ACTIVELY MONITOR THE FULL ROADMAP.

Or yell back at me, hey Karen, they are right over here!

I renew in March and am considering canceling for another service I won’t name who is becoming more Trakt than Trakt, or switching to a simple free service. I likely will renew for another year as Trakt does still provide what I need today. That’s my full honestly. You probably have another renewal in me.

12 Likes
15

I have noticed that people post comprehensive feedback on what is missing or needed, then weeks pass with not a single response from anyone, and then people get extremely frustrated. I gave comprehensive feedback in November, and never saw a single response. When people feel ignored when asked for feedback (on something they pay for) and then get frustrated due to no response, and post frustrated comments, and then only the frustrated comments are acknowledged…. well, you can guess the rest.

You have a ton of desktop power users who suddenly found the URL redirected to the “app”, with things too difficult to find, and a lot of features missing (see my comprehensive post - NOTE: it was written in November, back when I logged in one morning to use Trakt like I always do, and it was suddenly v3, and I couldn’t get to v2, so I was SHOCKED so understand and forgive the negative tone), and were shocked and worried. And then ignored.

For me, I think the phone app looks good visually, although I almost never use it. I use the desktop version every day, and it’s always open, I use it to track what I watch, check what is streaming on my chosen streaming platforms, track actors and directors to check in and see if they have anything new, and I have comprehensive lists for various other purposes. The website v2 is prefect for that - it is a comprehensive visual experience, it provides a massive amount of information and utility. The "app” version of the website does not (see my comprehensive post, keeping in mind I was shocked when I wrote it, so some of it has a negative vibe). Call me old and old fashioned, but a website should be a website and should be comprehensive, and the app should be for ease of use and speed.

To piggyback on what other people have said, I would say 2 things:

  1. Give a comprehensive list of plans, so that everyone knows exactly what you intend to do.
  2. Create a single page on the website with links to everything with descriptions. Just make it easy to find things.

This is literally the first time I’ve actually cared about a website’s changes in my life - that means that you got it right, and we’re hoping you keep that moving forward. No other tracking site has all the features that Trakt has, and I don’t use phone apps. So here’s to hoping you keep the features we all use.

21 Likes
16

Long term health comes from prioritizing things that long term users need. They’ve been here the longest. They know what works and what doesn’t about the site. They know what’s important about the site. You can always introduce new ideas, but do so without restricting the features long term users actually want to use the site for. The new design seems so weirdly focused on things most people don’t want from trakt, in a clear assumption about what these theoretical future users might want. It downgrades basic functionality and makes the new app feel useless to a lot of us as a result.

I am a developer and I know you don’t alienate your existing user base for a hopeful growth. You can add to the functionality of the site WHILE optimizing and retaining existing functionality that the core existing users need. And you shouldn’t force a new UI experience on users when it isn’t feature complete.

14 Likes