Agreed. I use it in the same way and it allows discovery of "similar" books. I love it for that. I comment occasionally on the author's I follow. For example, Boris does a lot of reading and review of horror genre books, so I comment on his reviews letting him know if his review helped me to get the book in question or not. That way he knows "someone" is reading his reviews. That's about the extent.

I haven't a clue. I like Goodreads. I can read reviews, get notified when my favourite authors publish new work, and keep track of what I'm reading.

People are probably looking for a good place to discuss books they've read.

It has gotten more closed in its approach. I cannot download my own data anymore.

And the UI was always bloated and clunky.

It's used for sea-lion ideological attacks against authors and works, a specific outcome of the general review-spam issue.

The data is terrible and badly governed. There was a recent thread here, I believe, about an author who couldn't get AI-written books out of her name because they simply won't correct their data.