I contributed first by no longer posting there and only rarely lurking on niches that aren’t popular here. I am contributing more now that they have blocked old.reddit, because ain’t no way I’m even lurking with the new interface.

I completely deleted my Reddit account, which is not a decision I took lightly, after more than 10 years of using that website frequently. I didn’t use any of the purge apps, my comments can be fossilized under [deleted] incase it helps anyone.

Makes me wonder if that’s a good indication of quality? I highly doubt bot accounts and astroturfers would ever delete their account, it’s too valuable for them. Deleted users are kind of verified human in a way.

Unless they get banned

My personal shame is to still google “product” + Reddit every month if so. Nothing compares to Reddit’s comments on recommendations.

It’s true, but the value is diminishing. I’ve tried that and more than once in the past half year, the advice within reddit posts were clearly astroturf AI-generated slop, and some of them were upvoted in similar amounts to apparent real recommendations.

Companies know Reddit is a recommendation hotspot, and stealth advertising is becoming typical business practice.

yeah SEO people have caught on tons of fake reviews for products

These days the recommendation isn’t real unless it’s from a random youtuber who’s testing 10 similar products in a 30 minute video and has spreadsheets.

has spreadsheets

That’s a very important part

I’ve been giving bad advice. As a joke.

Still worthwhile for older posts. Limit responses to 3+ years old and they’re pretty good

The problem with that is that any product that was good three years ago is far from guaranteed to be good now. Evening is getting shittier and less consistent. Any given product run manufactured in a different factory than the last run if there’s a lower bidder. I don’t trust reviews older than like six months at this point.

Internet is dead. If you just google the product, reddit will probably be the best result

even google does that now

most of reddit is 50% bots anyways, reddit is cannabilizing itself to stay alive.

I went back about a month ago to delve into a pipetobacco community since there’s fuckall on the fediverse for anything even remotely similar, and got bored in half a day, found a UBB board and joined it instead, then I left the reddit account to rot.