For years, I was a very prominent community member on r/vans (different username). I have been a very large content creator there and loved the community, but I’m thru with reddit.
I had the random thought to search google images for the shoes I’ve posted, searching “vans [model keyword] reddit” and I was surprised to see that my posts were consistently the top image results. Half the time the first image result was one of mine, and the vast majority of the time my images were the 2nd and 3rd image results.
Those are just the tip of the iceberg. I realize now that one user absolutely can make a measurable impact, as I have undoubtedly directed an absurd amount of traffic to reddit and r/vans thru image search engines over the years. Not anymore!
I went thru reddit manually deleting years of posts off of r/vans (admins can undue the script deletion). Now there are 100s of image results on search engines that just go to my deleted reddit posts!
Most importantly… I have created [email protected] (alt link for apps that don’t support that format) and strongly encourage any Vans fans to check it out! I have also published the greatest shoe cleaning guide on the internet over there!
I tried and was downvoted even when I made an actual contributing post, and limited it to mentioning the lemmy community only in the comments.
The core r/vans community and SamTheKing25 (top mod) is awesome and supported the blackout when voted on. But the overall reddit community has grown so toxic… And while r/vans may be niche, it is in the top 5% largest subreddits.
So while the most active posters/supportive community members may remain, they are outnumbered by a very toxic mass, many of whom mostly just vote and sometimes comment. And they are solely the community members responsible for the rare hateful comments in r/vans. Sadly I think the user-base of reddit as a whole will only grow more toxic.
Edit: Want to clarify that I made a reddit post that was well received before the blackout happened, in which I did link c/vans. But I made another post sharing a new pair the other day, and was downvoted for mentioning lemmy in the comments.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Reddit admins have it set up to automatically downvote anyone mentioning one of the alternatives. It makes me wonder how often they were messing with the apparent popularity of many posts and comments. Like somethings that were downvoted were just baffling as to why anyone would have a problem with that specific thing being said.
Yeah, the admins there have a proven, long history of deceitful manipulation.
Yeah - I honestly believe the 3PA users were top community contributors and more likely to leave.
I have no hard data to back it up, but it sure seems like the overall quality of content on Reddit has bombed.
Personally I’m no power user or anything but I did have 6 figure comment and post karma. I even gave myself permission to use old.reddit.com after the API change and I’ve just had no urge to contribute. I’ve started to post a couple times and decided it’s just not worth the effort anymore.
Wait till they have lesser quality stuff to consume!