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 !vans@lemmy.world (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 think the most insulting thing is that reddit wants to monetize off of things like YOUR efforts and YOUR content. Stuck it to em’ and made us proud! Nice work! Hope your new community does well.
At least you get some of the profits on the platforms. On Reddit you just get karma.
Mind boggling how many people can work for you for free and you still can’t make money
I had no idea that there was a sub for vans the entire 10 years I was on Reddit. Anyways, I’m now subscribed here!
Again, the easy way to ruin them would be to sneak a couple of “as an AI language models” into threads, preferably pre-2022, with a large number of posts to poison the data and render the entire thread unusable.
Hey, I’m just lazy, and that was the way to deal the most damage with the least amount of effort.
Seeing as their valuation has tumbled over the past few years, and all their value is made from user content like this, if they aren’t afraid now, they should be. 🤷♂️
First we had the Musk simps, now the Reddit ones. Go back to Reddit if you enjoy it that much, and stop trying to be the “edgy” guy here
I hope to see more and more people doing this