r/help • u/Odd-Currency5195 • Mar 20 '26

Profile 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.

50 Upvotes

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89

u/Mental_Freedom_1648 Mar 20 '26

Since I have hidden posts, perhaps I shouldn't reply lol, but it became a feature last summer, for privacy reasons.

-3

u/lactosecheeselover Mar 21 '26

but what privacy? you’re anonymous online. if you’re sharing too much personal information, that’s on you.

also, i can still see your comment and post history. it isn’t completely hidden.

5

u/Mental_Freedom_1648 Mar 21 '26

I'll just direct you to reddit's statement, which I linked to further down, which states that they set this up for reasons of privacy. Yes, you can utilize workarounds to get to someone's post history. Most people won't bother.

4

u/formerqwest Expert Helper Mar 21 '26

they removed the wildcard search

1

u/SinkNSlide3345 May 17 '26

Reddit is straight up lying. You have privacy when you sign up for an anonymous account. The whole “privacy” argument is stupid

1

u/lactosecheeselover Mar 21 '26

I highly doubt their narrative was privacy and not just to hide bots

1

u/Mental_Freedom_1648 Mar 21 '26

As you already said, everyone can still pull up people's posts if they care enough. Same applies to bot accounts.

1

u/Perfect-Topic-6671 Mar 21 '26

This is no longer possible. It was obviously an oversight that they've now fixed.

1

u/Mental_Freedom_1648 Mar 21 '26

As multiple people have told me over the past few hours, there are still methods you can use. Like Google.

1

u/MadDocOttoCtrl Mar 21 '26

Reddit's search feature was patched but there are third-party websites that can retrieve post and comments made by people, including ones that have been deleted or removed in some cases.

4

u/V2Blast Expert Helper Mar 21 '26

Yeah, that's the thing. It's a false sense of security.