this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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This is what killed nsfw on reddit. All these beautiful, niche subs. Destroyed by of spam. I wrote a bot that scanned a posters history, and if it found an of link, it flagged them. Of course it was banned on reddit.
I am quite time poor to learn a new bot language here at the moment but in time I could give it a crack.
OF spam kills communities.
Based on what evidence?
As a mod of many subs on Reddit, what I saw killed a lot of the subs over thepast year is the proliferation of spam accounts that repost popular posts indiscriminately within a sub (OC, seller, doesn't matter) in order to advertise products/websites, etc via pinned posts on their profiles. Plus the Reddit admins allowing "viral" subreddits to spring up on a daily basis by these spam rings.
Most competent mods on legit subreddits knew how to use automod and verification tools to handle sellers, etc. What drove a lot of us mods to throw up our hands and close off subreddits is the fact that we got no support from admins to combat spam/spammers (not the same as sellers).
And of course, at the same time, Reddit banned a lot of long time experienced moderator accounts which then resulted in many niche subreddits to be banned due to lack of moderation. From my viewpoint, the culprit is not due to sellers.
[Addition] - Just old history for reference
Haha - what a coincidence! I was part of the ones that reported to Reddit admins such bots like the one you wrote so that those bots would be banned ๐ (and they were)
[Addition] rip onlyfansdetectbot, https://imgur.com/LrQhZv6, Full album for related screenshots wrt bot - https://imgur.com/a/tfqTKLg
I wholeheartedly and respectfully disagree. I used to visit the communities, let's say /r/assholebehindthong or something like /r/assontheglass. It was a true community full of people who were into that particular fetish. It was smaller, traffic was not as fast, but the posts were quality. Pure quality.
Now it's a non stop stream of:
Total clickbait spammy shit. You'll visit a subreddit like /r/doublevaginal and you'll get an OF spammer posting an image that has nothing to do with DV and a title like "would you like to double vag me?!".
The subreddits have been laid waste to the scourge of OF spamming. I yearn for the days when the subreddits were actual, real people posting real, focused content. It's done, it's gone and it's nearly 100% OF material that's killed it.
I totally understand the frustration you and many others have. It's easy to simply point at sellers and say they are the cause - its so convenient to scapegoat.
in my reply earlier, ive laid out some of my observations (over 5 years) about the decline. A sub/community's health and success is almost totally based on the moderator teams and whether they actually care about what they are moderating vs if they just want to build/expand little fiefdoms for ego reasons. And believe it or not, the community members play a huge part in reporting and weeding out spam and keeping the playground clean if mods motivate them and take action on reports.
As mentioned, most of the usual clickbait can and is easily handled by automod as well as by moderators who can lay out a vision and set reasonable rules for the community, as well as judicious banning. Talented sellers know how to properly focus on what the community want and deliver (without the clickbait). As an example, I took over r/LabiaGW for a couple of years from the founder of sub and grew it from 100K to 500k in that time (with the help of a healthy mix of true amateurs AND verified responsible sellers). The clickbait sellers don't last long beyond a few days and are easily banned/weeded out by the community.
Unfortunately, Reddit allowed (explicitly encouraged?) spamrings to flourish and exist because it needed the traffic from such to keep showing subscribers and traffic "growth" metrics (likely for advertising and planned IPO purposes). Mods had to spend majority of the time fighting THAT spam so couldn't focus on actually "moderating" and cultivating the communities. Reddit also banned/removed a lot of such responsible mods (or some mods just threw up their hands at lack of inaction about spam from Reddit admins and left the mod teams), and then these subs got taken over by shady folks who purpose is simply to promote and actively provide forums for the spam stuff you mentioned. Try looking at various mods/rings that currently "operate" the subs full of the spam you abhor, vs the successful subs that remain relatively clean and are growing. Ask yourself why Reddit admins allow hese shady folks to flourish even when repeatedly reported, but actively seek out to remove ban responsible mods who do such reporting...
I hope Lemmy admins are reasonable and smart enough to recognize the true causes and don't knee-jerk ban sellers.
Yeah but at this point they're probably helping growth since they post so much actual content, so I think having a light hand towards them is beneficial. Still should be in the proper subs though.