My FU to reddit - Disrupting Substantial Traffic and Rebuilding on Lemmy

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.

Here are some examples.

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 (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!

200ok,

There’s a community for advertising new communities!

GONADS125,

I posted there when I first created c/vans. Didn’t gain any traction… Do they allow reposting? Considered it but don’t want to spam.

andy_wijaya_med,
@andy_wijaya_med@lemmy.world avatar

That’s a good idea. But have you checked the posts? XD

trouser_mouse,
@trouser_mouse@lemmy.world avatar

Keep an eye for old posts you have deleted being restored.

Rentlar,

Yeah if you had a highly upvoted answer to a question and want to inflict maximum damage, just ask chatGPT to generate a couple paragraphs of SEO terms for the question, replace your answer with that.

sawdustprophet,
@sawdustprophet@midwest.social avatar

just ask chatGPT to generate a couple paragraphs of SEO terms for the question, replace your answer with that.

Chaotic neutral boss energy.

mild_giardiniera,

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!

MargotRobbie,
@MargotRobbie@lemmy.world avatar

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.

ultratiem,
@ultratiem@lemmy.world avatar

I like how u roll stranger

MargotRobbie,
@MargotRobbie@lemmy.world avatar

Hey, I’m just lazy, and that was the way to deal the most damage with the least amount of effort.

ultratiem,
@ultratiem@lemmy.world avatar

You say lazy I hear efficient

Backstab,

Can you share your deletion script?

dancingsnail,

They did it manually so admins could not “undelete” them

wasabi,

I’m not sure that’s how it works. Pretty sure admins could undelete anything.

Stoney_Logica1,

If they could, they’d just as easily be able to restore manually deleted posts or comments.

JakenVeina,

Right, I think the point is that they can more easily identify strings of deletions that look like they came from a script" as opposed to activity that looks like legitimate user activity, because it was actually performed ny a user.

GONADS125,

This is exactly it. There has been mass reversal of script-deleted content on reddit. It’s much harder for them to identify and reverse manual deletions (so I’ve heard).

crusa187,

Welcome duder, love your work, and glad you’re here!

glorious_albus,

Not to be that guy but admins can absolutely revert even your manual deletion.

Sshaggy,

Re-upload with pics of a vehicle instead?

herrvogel,

That assumes reddit doesn’t version their data, which they probably do. In that case they could revert that too without even having to go through the trouble of restoring the data from backup, which they probably keep as well.

TL;DR you’re not gonna manage to make reddit lose your data. They can get it back if they care enough and if it’s hosted within their domain.

GONADS125,

I mostly posted thru imgur albums automatically generated thru my 3rd party app, rather than reddit hosted images.

glorious_albus,

You could go to Imgur and delete your albums (or make them private or something, I don’t know how Imgur works).

GONADS125,

I read on here recently that imgur deleted standalone posts not attached to users, which I believe would include the links generated by my 3rd party client. They were not attached to my imgur account. I think imgur’s self-destruction took care of it for me.

glorious_albus,

It’s fascinating how all these websites have decided to kill themselves all at the same time.

Hyperreality,

Re-upload with pics of large dicks.

Kietan,

Depends your location, IIRC Europeans can request permanent deletion of their content and they are required by law to comply.

Nowyn,

Not all content just personally identifiable information.

Thteven,
@Thteven@lemmy.world avatar

That’s why I didn’t delete my account yet, I want to be able to edit my comments when they revert them. I’m just going keep editing and editing, who knows what scripts I’ll run this week?

Cryst,

What scripts do you run that mass edits and deletes?

Thteven,
@Thteven@lemmy.world avatar

I used power delete suite before, I’ll probably check out some others too just to keep overwriting everything.

github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite

Diabolo96,

i never heard of vans before. Nonetheless, it’s good seeing such a niche community on lemmy. Maybe create a post on reddit to ask users to join your community as It’s hard for it to be randomly discovered by users as of now.

GONADS125, (edited )

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.

coconutxyz,

Wait till they have lesser quality stuff to consume!

Buddahriffic,

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.

lemmyshmemmy,

Yeah, the admins there have a proven, long history of deceitful manipulation.

ccunning,

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.

Alivrah,

I hope to see more and more people doing this

DaaftRaaft,

Clicking the community link in mlem takes me to the mail app on ios, just fyi, might cause less people to easily subscribe to the community.

GONADS125,

lemmy.world/c/vans should work I believe. I’ll edit my post, thank you!

ryo,

I believe if you use something like !vans it becomes an universal link and works in any app and any instance.

Edit: this link I posted allowed me to enter the community and subscribe without leaving wefwef or having to login to another instance.

Dragonmind,

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.

GildedGriffon,

While also farming out the content moderation to volunteers.

Glarrf,

Happy to have you! Thank you for your hard work!

blakerboy777,

Dude that’s awesome!

FarLine99,

GONADS125, you are cool. I wish popularity to your community! ✊❤️

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