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.