Mandro

Look, I can only share my experience. In my opinion, this was a mix of a number of factors. Now, the easiest narrative to push is to say AI is the sole reason this has all happened. AI has obviously affected things, but it is not the only reason this collapse happened as fast as it did. In my opinion, there were a number of things that accelerated it: 1. Removing quality control, opening the marketplace, and allowing it to be flooded with 7,000+ new templates most of which are poor quality or copycats. 2. A new ranking algorithm that just didn't work, hence why it's been changed so much and still continues to be changed. And because of the point above, it's understandably a very tough task to balance now. 3. A new redesign of the marketplace/community that prioritised the community over the marketplace and conversion (which was well documented by all the angry creators here on X over the last few months) that eventually got changed back to basically how it was before the update. But that alone was no longer enough to repair the points above. So all of these, coupled with the way the industry is moving with AI is the reason why it all fell apart so quickly for so many creators in my opinion. It's completely normal for companies to change and evolve and there to be a downward curve over time, but the way this fell off a cliff from June 16th, it's quite obvious to see there's more to it than AI. It's unfortunate, but like I say, it's business.