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!
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.
I like how u roll stranger
Hey, I’m just lazy, and that was the way to deal the most damage with the least amount of effort.
You say lazy I hear efficient
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.
While also farming out the content moderation to volunteers.
I mean, isn’t that what YouTube, Instagram and TikTok do?
At least you get some of the profits on the platforms. On Reddit you just get karma.
Yeah that’s a good point.
Dude that’s awesome!
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!
Not to be that guy but admins can absolutely revert even your manual deletion.
Re-upload with pics of a vehicle instead?
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.
I mostly posted thru imgur albums automatically generated thru my 3rd party app, rather than reddit hosted images.
You could go to Imgur and delete your albums (or make them private or something, I don’t know how Imgur works).
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.
It’s fascinating how all these websites have decided to kill themselves all at the same time.
Wow, I’m sure Reddit is shivering because you TOTALLY owned the multibillion dollar corporation
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. 🤷♂️
