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!
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.