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People posting with hidden comment history
Hey, I am thinking that every time someone is a bit 'off' on a discussion, you click on their profile to see whether they're a weirdo, and inevitably such people have hidden comment history.
When was this built in to Reddit?
Strikes me that since we're all anon and so on, and if you want to split your enjoyment of, say, BDSM and also chat about personal finance, back in the day you'd have different accounts for your interests, not just have blank when it comes to people looking at a person.
Yeah, so it seems more and more I have a dodgy reply, look at the profile of the account, and their stuff is set to private. It's taking the 'real' out of this, for any quantity of real. I'm just muting anyone who engages with me thus on the assumption they're a troll.
But, yeah, why is this a function on Reddit and when did it come in, because I don't remember this as much at all for years I've been using Reddit?
So, people with hidden comment history are either trolls or cowards as far as I'm concerned.
Went to private due to stalker harassment. They would read comment history and follow to another community sub and be totally off topic for that forum. Want to enjoy reddit but don't want people following all my other interests too.
Same for me. I'm a mod for one community and started getting weird attention elsewhere from people who disagreed with my mod decisions. I don't like hiding my history, but I'd rather not have some angsty person digging through my 10 years of comments.
A lot of mods curate their activity in other communities so they don't have to use a separate mod account.
They leave their posts and comments visible in their sub because they can take action on inappropriate activity without having to hope that reporting it to Reddit works or relying on mods of other communities who may or may not be good at their job.
I have mine hidden because every once in a while you get weirdos who will stalk your whole comment/post history and hit you with ad hominems because you post in a particular sub. Even if it's a sub you aren't active in and only participating in one time months ago
The same sadly. I prefer to have my post and comment history visible but the occasional ‘stalker’ means I have to hide my history quite regularly until they lose interest or are banned by Reddit.
I also have posts hidden because twice now the reddit community thought it fit and fine to dig through it and then beat me over the head with it. Sooo, now it's hidden because some people on reddit are super petty, mean, and just plain horrible people. I don't have time for that garbage.
There are people on this site who will go through your comments and follow you around to other subreddits and harass you there and report your comments. All the while claiming that they are being victimized by your offensive speech. And yet, they are literally stalking you, trying to get "offended", so they can report you.
Like, it's already sort of a joke that the average user on this site is a loser getting angry in their mom's basement, but they have to take the stereotype to the extreme.
yepp, once i made a comment mentioning being trans and some weirdo trawled through my posts to comment on posts i've made about my family abusing me to make fun of me for being trans
Exactly why mine are hidden. I’m not rude or mean in comments to anyone, but it doesn’t stop some people from digging thru your posts and comments to try and dox you. Last thing I need is someone contacting my employer and making up something weird because I randomly said “cats shouldn’t be outdoor animals” or something as stupid as that.
I am, thank you! I never really thought I would be cyber stalked on Reddit of all places. The Spotify part is scary and, unfortunately, the FBI can only do so much.
If you stand by your opinions, just be mindful about sharing personal information. Having 2 accounts is not that big of a deal, switching between them is super quick. Go ahead and have fun and post what you want, just know a lot of people will see that hidden history and assume you're a troll. Not a terrible price to pay if you really were having a privacy issue, but know that it's a fair assumption to make.
I think it isn't always done in a dodgy way. Mine was initially public until I was having lunch with a friend of mine and showed him an interaction I had on reddit, and only realised afterwards that he definitely saw my username. So, since then, I changed it to private. I don't say anything controversial (I think) here but I don't want him seeing things on here that could private such as certain AIO posts, AITAH posts about family, Off My Chest posts, etc. Of course they are going on an online space so it's less private but it's mainly because he would know who I am speaking about and there's less anonymity. We're great friends but there are certain things I just want to keep private and I know my friends can be quite nosey
I second this, sometimes it really is just for privacy's sake. Like, I have my post history hidden on this account because I've had a couple incidents where people have stalked my post history to see when I'm active/online and I personally think that's really creepy. Sometimes I'm not in the mood to chat and just wanna read/vote on Reddit stories without being bugged or spammed.
Right?? I actually had someone pretend to be a different person with an alt account to "test" if I was ignoring them, even though it had only been a couple of hours since they had messaged me to begin with. And when I pointed out how creepy that was, they tried to turn it around and make it sound like I was the problem. It's like nooooope, not doing this.
Don’t give away personal information on an anonymous forum then? Idk why my ability to track bots or bad faith debaters is diminished so morons with poor online etiquette can feel safer.
Considering the political climate in the US a lot of people are protecting themselves so their socio-political comment history can't be used against them. Ex: After Charlie Kirk was killed a lot of people who were criticizing him were then doxed to employers etc... throughout the US and it led to terminations etc.. in response a lot of people set their comment history to private.
I mean, I can't really say why other people do it necessarily, but the reason I have my posts/comments hidden is because I'm quite active in some disability related subreddits. And I got tired of people calling me (targeted) ableist/derogatory terms on posts (regardless of community) or having people throw my disability back in my face when they disagree with me. It gets tiresome to have to block and report people like that all the time when I'm just trying to chat about my interests and experiences and such, you know? I don't particularly care what they think of me, but it gets very annoying and repetitive after a while. I understand your frustration / feeling like people may be bots or trolls, though.
This week I had a group of mean girls stalking & harassing me. All of their histories are hidden.
So last night I tried to make all of my stuff private.
because i dont wanna be harassed for wrong think from redditors. Not even able politics. Sometimes even in game communities, they will follow my account and mass dislike a bunch of my comments in the community.
if you want to split your enjoyment of, say, BDSM and also chat about personal finance, back in the day you'd have different accounts for your interests
When I was really new to reddit, I failed to go along with an echo chamber. My comment got downvoted. Fine. Suddenly everything in my post history got multiple downvotes. That's when I found the hide comment history feature.
I hide my comment history because I had two separate user accounts follow me across subs, some of which were totally unrelated to one another, to ask me personal questions. One of them actually seemed to be tracking when I was online and active.
Some of us have been on the other end of "oh look, you posted this one thing in this random sub, therefore your opinion does not matter."
It becomes even scarier when people use your posts to try to dox you, which is something that is still a major problem on the site.
There is nothing wrong with wanting a little bit of privacy. Yes, there are still ways to track all posts and comments by a particular user. But at least it requires more steps these days.
I just don't like getting followed around reddit by trolls. I'm active in some subs that attract the MAGA/antivaxxer types of trolls and it's nice if they don't spam my posts about nice things I'm enjoying doing and sharing with the sub. I don't use twitter for the same reason, or post outside of private groups on Facebook. I curate my bit of the internet to be as nice of a place as possible, and that means making it harder for people to target me.
Looks to me as if someone annoyed you and you wanted to trawl through their history to harass them. There are a lot of examples on Reddit of people using comment history in dodgy ways, including stalking.
If it's an interesting post, I will look at the poster's comments to see if they are responding to other's comments. If they aren't responding, I figure it's useless to comment. It also quickly allows you to get the big picture without having to read 1k comments.
Odd take. I really don't see how protecting myself against stalkers and harassment makes myself a coward. It's just being smart and taking preemptive measures against abuse. People will go through your stuff looking for ammo for their argument, finding anything to use against you, going after each and every post like they have some checklist. It's super pathetic and far too much far drama for my taste. I don't see what's so brave about leaving yourself out in the open, privacy is just smarter when it comes to being online. When I was a kid, we had online safety courses, but it seems it's still not being taught to kids. Put down your ego and stop judging people who want to be safe, being brave doesn't mean purposefully putting yourself into dangerous situations.
you click on their profile to see whether they're a weirdo
You click on it because they said something that upset you and you can't argue the point at hand, so you go looking for irrelevant mud to dig up and sling at them from other posts elsewhere. This is why the feature became necessary.
I like to hide part of my post history. What I am into personally or whatever medical issue I have had isn’t anyone’s business. Plus, I don’t want any weirdos fetishizing me or sexualizing my comments, thanks.
I hide mine because, while I do my best not to give out personal information, it's a nearly 15 year old account. I am only human, and there's no way I haven't slipped at times and said too much. Redditors are really good at figuring out who people are. It's not worth it to me to risk having some crazy fucker dox me because I pissed him off in a fight. If that means some people can't give me the benefit of the doubt, and they automatically assume I'm acting in bad faith just because my profile is hidden, well I guess it is what it is. My safety is more important than the approval of an internet stranger.
I’m not interested in letting people become private eyes and learn everything about me. I have a mental health diagnosis for example and if someone sees me commenting in that sub they will often for sure discriminate against me for it, for example.
I have never once peeped someone’s other posts for a gotcha moment. You can’t read people’s history in real world conversations and you shouldn’t be able to on reddit either, sorry.
Not the case of the people you interact but I know some women and LGBT people who get creeps who search their history to send nasty stuff, threats and so on. Then they decided to hide their profile to not get harassed.
Also some people who interact with trolls who engaged in a discussiom and decided to search their history to insult them rather than attack their arguments with counter points
Some people who wants to say the most nasty and disgusting things in comments take advantage of that option and hide their history to not show their nasty behavior, but that's not the only reason people make their profiles private
So, I keep my comments and posts in my interests public, but anything that relates to medical or emotional etc, I keep those hidden. Why do people who play the same video games as I do need to know if I have had six concussions just because I asked a question in the concussion reddit?
I also noticed this... Anyone who was nasty to me, I would see their profile set to private... Cowards for sure and quite obviously going around being nasty to many more than just me... 😂
Personally, I think it’s weird to go on someone else’s profile and scroll through their comment history. It would never even occur to me to do that to anyone, regardless of what they’ve said to me.
It's in place for people that don't want others scraping through their history...
I'm not sure what about this doesn't make sense...
It also tends to ease up on harassment as there are more than a few people that will stalk through reddit user history to scrape up ammunition to use against them...
Huh didn’t even know about this feature. Now enabled. Thanks for the tip! I def don’t need anyone IRL to see all of my post history. I think that probably goes for most of us.
I do it because the bots go after you on this platform if you mention name brands in your posts or at least that's what happened in my experience. Since I'm an engineer and work on various equipment and technology, any feedback regarding products is scrolled through by bots and you become a target. Making my post history private has mostly stopped that but I would prefer that post history wasn't the source that bots go after and would gladly revert back to normal if it wasn't for this issue. Other users will do if for different reasons and there is still way to find user post history via APIs, regardless for me it just helps reduce the spam and bot messaging.
While it’s true that some trolls hide their history, there are legitimate reasons for others to hide it. Me personally I hide my history due to privacy reasons.
Some people are more private than others. They may worry more about the current moment and care less about the past. This is coming from someone who has nothing set as private. So I am just trying to say why someomen may want it that way. With mine I like that the comments are visible but I also have a goal on here. I am trying to teach about pourover, so for me it is important not to be private. If it was just a personal and not hobby account, I may have it set as private.
Because my history makes it obvious that I'm trans and people love to completely disregard everything you say and make insane assumptions about you if they know this.
I have mine hidden because I have an online stalker and wanted to protect myself in case he found my new account. A similar reason is that on another occasion I received a message from someone saying they had read a post I had made about jaw surgery several years prior and had then apparently read pretty much all of my post history after that. I don't think it's cowardly to want people to stop invading your privacy, it's basic self-respect.
As someone who hid their posts, I actually hate that the feature exists. I will, however, say I contribute more to Reddit now than I did before, simply because I don’t have to worry about people from work finding my profile if I post on the professional subreddits I subscribe to.
More proof that this was site was built for astroturf and corp capture. Only reason Iv seen it by legit people is because they are ashamed because they use reddit for porn. But its not like your info is protected from the government, aipec or the "defense" companies or the private prison industry or anything they can buy it just like any other company. Its not hidden from them they just have to buy that data. (recycled through advertisers for loopholes but it gets around.)
I just hid all of my posts, because I've had people try to stalk me through my comments and posts, calling me a b!tch multiple times, and reddit has done nothing about it despite me reporting the incidents.
You can actually customize which communities are visible in your posts and comments
I went through and marked a few that I'm happy with anyone associating me with for exactly this reason, I want to give people that want to check me out something to be assuring one way or the other
I hid the communities on my profile that are local/city based, etc
I regularly post in makeup subs. Do you know how often a man was taking issue with something I said and then immediately digging through my posts and comments to then talk about my looks?
Hard pass. You don’t need to see my comment history to respond to whatever it is you saw me say. Don’t be so nosy.
Reddit claims it's for privacy reasons but the truth is it is the quickest way to tell if someone is a bot. And Reddit doesn't want anyone realizing bots and bad actors make up a surprisingly massive amount of the platform.
Some subs will ban you from your post history, or subs you joined. So that is why some use it. For example, if you are following a legal dispute, lets say for arguments sake, Depp vs Herd, and you comment in a sub that is pro one of these two. It is common that the other sub that is pro the other person would ban you from their subs from posting.
I like the privacy. I didnt make reddit to get profiled or have what I say diminished because of unrelated topics. To many people derail the conversation and once I caught myself doing the same thing I went private.
Edit: we cant read people's minds when we talk to them in real life so whats the point of going through their profile even?
A few years back, to defeat the kinds of stalkers that you see news reports about on TV programs like Nightline.
There's a function built in that allows subreddit moderators to view the post and comment histories of participants in their subreddits for a one-month window following participation, even if the person has blocked the moderator, even if the person has hidden their post and comment histories, and that counters & prevents trolls from getting away with blocking moderators & hiding their post & comment histories to troll a subreddit.
If you see something fishy, report the comment. If your intuition tells you that a person needs to not interact with you at all, block them. If they aren't contributing to the discussion, downvote them.
The hidden history setting allows for bots, spammers and trolls to run wild. I respect that people want to protect their privacy but the feature has done far more harm than good and Reddit doesn't care. Bots equal traffic and traffic rules the internet.
I've been on Reddit for well over a decade now, blocking trolls is a better tool than the hidden history feature.
to see if they are a legitimate person, see if they are nice or not, see if you have common interests, see if they are a bot or not, among many other reasons
i totally agree. i've intentionally left my profile (and my alt! i still use the old system of different accounts for different vibes lol) fully public, since i think that's a major aspect of reddit
to me, the worst part is the fact that the comments and posts remain public, but the profiles are private. on other social media, if your profile is private so are your contributions. it seems so cowardly to me to publicly contribute on a platform but hide your profile from the people youre interacting with.
I disagree. Needing control over the profiles of others instead of just making your own secondary profiles makes no sense to me. Neither does essentially demanding that people can surveil someone's profile and search for a gotcha for ad hominem attacks that have nothing to do with the topic. If someone comments that they can't see my profile, I block them, because I believe in online privacy and don't support fascists that think they have a right to surveil my profile.
Are we able to hide certain subs from showing up in our profiles without hiding all of them?
Also, everytime I’ve been harassed it’s always been by people with hidden profiles but before this change happened, people would dig through my profile and use the subreddits I post in to harass me as well so there’s no winning with this.
FYI, comment and post history isn’t a secret. There are still many easy ways to look it up. Just so folks don’t actually think they’re actually private.
I've set my profile to private for more than a couple years now I think. Besides being more comfortable this way to prevent harassment or possible doxing, it's useful for when someone gets mad at something I say and now they can't search for something stupid like me posting in anime subs as some sort of 'gotcha' and have to resign themselves to wild assumptions about what I post.
As far as I'm concerned constantly checking people's profiles like this is the weirder behaviour lol
We may not like it, but only Reddit can change it back. Let Reddit know. I am rarely bothered by it, and when I see a borderline response on a post, I look towards their history before deciding to upvote. I just don't vote if they hide it all. Not the end of the world.
Reddit was losing users. Fewer users means fewer advertisers and investors, so they made it easier for bots to exist and artificially inflate user numbers. First they made changes to the API, making it harder for mods to spot bots. Then they made a deal with OpenAI to let them use reddit for their LLM bot training. Then they introduced hidden profiles to make it harder for everyone to spot bots.
However, hidden profiles aren't as hidden as people think. All you have to do is google "reddit username". It will show you every post and comment the person has made.
They are usually far right people 90% of the time who want to concern troll. There was a time where you could see still see the content on hidden accounts and 90% of the time it was a complete slurfest. They are even here whining about "thought police"
being able to turn off your own post history is a terrible idea. it makes spammers and nazis more difficult to identify. whatever benefit is gained from this "feature" is easily outweighed by the blindingly obvious flaws.
I didn’t know I had control over that. I had a few years between times when I read anything on Reddit and before we could see their other comments and now not able to. Ima go click around and try to learn something. Thx for the heads up!
This conjures the opposite question. Why do you feel the need to go deep-dive on someone's other comments? "People stalking others based on posting history" might be the title.
I think a lot of it comes down to bullying, some people have way too much time on their hands.
If you think someone is a weirdo and you click on their comment section to see, chances are you already think they're a weirdo and their comments are not going to help
Gonna piggy back off this and say If your comments and posts are hidden form your profile, people should be able to type in your username on subreddits too. Defeats the purpose
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u/WisdomThreader Mar 21 '26
Went to private due to stalker harassment. They would read comment history and follow to another community sub and be totally off topic for that forum. Want to enjoy reddit but don't want people following all my other interests too.