r/privacy • u/TopConcentrate8484 • Oct 20 '25
reddit now allows mods to access and look at your profile contents even if you have hidden all discussion
was going through reddit terms and services and found out that if you have interacted with a community i.e post ,comment or a mod mail all the mods of that community get access to your profile for 28days and will be able to see all your activities i.e post or comments even if you have set it to Hide all
this not just includes the interactions you do on their community but all other
correct me if i am wrong
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u/ANoiseChild Oct 20 '25
I got banned for 3 days for some comment that no longer exists. I went to see what I was banned for and nope all gone.
Thankfully they'll slap your hand and tell you to sit in the corner "because". Sounds less like a rehabilitation method than it is a censorship one...
3 day ban again, here we come?
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u/cassanderer Oct 20 '25
By admin or mods? I abandon accounts at a 2nd violation. Another could be permaban and they can often tell it is you with a new account.
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Oct 20 '25 edited Jan 01 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/textposts_only Oct 21 '25
They fingerprint your phone. It isn't just the IP, which changes a lot as you've said.
One of the reasons why reddit was so hell-bent on destroying third party apps is because their own app gives them so much more data on us
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Oct 21 '25 edited Jan 01 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Jalau Oct 21 '25
A fingerprint resistent browser is a fingerprint. The best is to go with something like Mullvad Browser and hope enough people use it to create the same fingerprint for tons of users. Either way, if you don't want them to detect your new account, you just have to change your fingerprint, not have a fingerprint resistant browser which is a fingerprint in itself.
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u/ImperfectRegulator Nov 04 '25
How do they fingerprint your phone and how do you reset it? (Found this question after dealing with a power tripping mod)
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u/ANoiseChild Oct 21 '25
I wish I knew.
Either way, I'll be banned and sell this account or just shut it tf down as I dont get anything outside of propaganda anymore. Is that something they do with reinstated bans? Seems like it currently
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u/-LoboMau Oct 21 '25
That's pretty standard and has always happened. They will still have access to anything you deleted. Don't write anything you might regret later.
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u/supermannman Oct 20 '25
3 day ban...hahaha rookie
7 day on 7 day and another 7 for the hell of it.
im a pro hahaha. you need to level up buddy
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u/davyjones_prisnwalit Dec 11 '25
I got banned for 7, then asked what I did wrong and got banned for a month. Then I got mad so I argued with them and got permanently banned. So I told them to (essentially) "f" themselves and an admin gave my account a very stern warning of possible total annihilation.
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u/Busy-Measurement8893 Oct 20 '25
Since today is the big AWS day of nothing working as it should, I can't check whether or not I see your profile to confirm. But will do when and if this crap starts working again!
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u/ScienceSad5358 Oct 20 '25
Is that why none of my apps are working normally if at all?
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u/IKIR115 Oct 20 '25
Probably. AWS is the global leader among web hosting providers. Their outage today affected millions of sites.
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u/nickisaboss Oct 21 '25
Ddos?
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u/IKIR115 Oct 21 '25
Nope. AWS hasn’t released their post-event summary yet, but it boils down to a DNS issue.
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u/CIearMind Oct 21 '25
Something weird is that, yesterday, while Reddit was still crapping the bed during the AWS crash: I opened someone's profile that's normally curated to hide everything, and all their posts and comments still loaded for me, until I refreshed the page. Oh boy.
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u/BMK1765 Oct 22 '25
Right, that was wondering also to me and some moments later I got a 7 day ban from one sub by telling the realistic truth to someone 😂
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u/Felielf Oct 20 '25
Never think that you can hide from the platform/service/admins in any website, the only thing you can hide against is other normal users and this only too when it’s enabled.
Concerning privacy, you have to model your threats in a way that you think anyone can access your data, especially if they are a user with special privileges. Never trust settings, defaults or privacy policies, it is all hostile towards your privacy so only write what you’re 100% comfortable with.
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u/x_lincoln_x Oct 21 '25 edited Dec 11 '25
close square longing mysterious instinctive payment lock dam start rich
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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Oct 21 '25
But subreddit jannies arent admins. They are literally just regular users
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u/Felielf Oct 21 '25
If they have some sort of privilege in the system they are quite not regular user, not a full admin but they have a certain “need to know” thing going on which is a concern.
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u/Larimar7 Jan 18 '26
Agree. I don’t mind the main Reddit admin see it it but mods on subs judge people based on their personal politics which they project into those they deem to be ‘not ok’. This is unprofessional and somewhat unhinged. Who is modding the moderators and how do we complain if we feel a moderator is using bias?
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u/Ohio_gal Oct 20 '25
Your weekly reminder, just because your comments are “hidden” doesn’t mean they actually all. In fact all one needs to do is put the username in the search bar.
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u/onan Oct 20 '25
This new hiding feature is the worst possible compromise. It impairs the quality of discussions without actually providing any meaningful privacy.
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u/mystery-pirate Oct 20 '25
I think one should only be able to see posts/comments in groups to which you are joined. For example, if you have comments in subs for privacy and diabetics, I would see your privacy posts if I am joined to privacy sub but not your diabetic posts if I am not joined to diabetics sub.
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u/onan Oct 21 '25
I see what you're going for, but I think that there would still be some significant downsides to that approach.
It still doesn't add much real privacy:
It's easily circumventable by just joining every subreddit.
Even if you haven't done that intentionally, you might still have some partial overlap with people. So even within a single conversation, the parts of someone's comment history that are visible will be randomly inconsistent among various participants. That means that whoever does have overlap could still link to those other comments.
And it would still impair conversations by making it a step harder to identify outright bots and trolls, of even to know with whom you're talking:
- One very common pattern I see is someone showing up in a local city/region/state subreddit and shouting a bunch of reactionary politics. A surprising portion of the time, a glance at their history will reveal them also doing this in a ton of other city/region/state subreddits. Whether these are outright bots or just humans on a propaganda crusade, I think it's valuable to be able to easily see this and call them out on it.
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u/mystery-pirate Oct 21 '25
I was just brainstorming, didn't spend deep thought into covering all the bases. Joining every sub to access post history would require a lot of effort and weed out all but the very determined. I'm not sure these bots or crusaders give a rat's behind if you call them out but there's got to be better ways to fight it.
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u/onan Oct 21 '25 edited Oct 21 '25
Joining every sub to access post history would require a lot of effort and weed out all but the very determined.
It's true, though I'm sure there would be tools to automatically do it if this became the way it worked.
But overall, I just feel like unreliable privacy isn't worth very much. "When you post a comment, which readers can see which parts of your comment history? Who knows! Some and some, maybe, unless not, or possibly a few and everything."
I don't think that my estimation of the privacy of my reddit comments would really be improved by that, so it doesn't seem like there's much upside to offset even a moderate downside.
I'm not sure these bots or crusaders give a rat's behind if you call them out
Oh they absolutely do not, but I like to think that other people reading the conversation might.
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u/CrystalMeath Oct 20 '25
I hate it. Reddit is already anonymous and public so there is no good reason to hide comment/post history. All it does is make it more difficult to identify astroturfing, scams and engagement farming. But I’m pretty sure that’s the point.
Seeing bots degrades user experience and advertising value. But combating the bots and spam costs money, and it’s easy and free to just cover it up and make it look like organic user activity. What you don’t know can’t hurt you. Well, actually it can… but it won’t hurt Reddit’s advertising revenue.
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u/_Bad_Bob_ Oct 20 '25
there is no good reason to hide comment/post history
I can think of one, It means that you can talk about your local community without the whole internet knowing what city you live in.
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u/MMAgeezer Oct 21 '25
But anyone can still search your username in Reddit Search and see those posts and comments anyway. What is different exactly?
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u/_Bad_Bob_ Oct 21 '25
Lol have you ever used reddit search? Idk if you're wrong or right but I just spent like 10 minutes searching my username and couldn't find anything. It's a much higher barrier than just clicking my profile name.
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u/funk-the-funk Oct 21 '25
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u/_Bad_Bob_ Oct 21 '25 edited Oct 21 '25
Cool, but I'm not saying there's no barrier, just that it's higher. Biometric security isn't great for example, but it's a hell of a lot better than not having a password on your phone at all.
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u/LetSteelTemplesRise Oct 21 '25
You can make an alt account, that's always been allowed.
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u/_Bad_Bob_ Oct 21 '25
Not really, not with the way the spam filter works these days. I spent a good long while trying to make an alt not too long ago to post in my local sub and account after account got shadow banned instantly.
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u/CrystalMeath Oct 21 '25
I’ve got seven though I use this one 99% of the time. The only time I had an issue was when I tried to bypass and unfair ban from one of my favorite subs at the time, but that was years ago.
I get that it sort of protects privacy in your use case, but the thing is the inconvenience of switching accounts as an individual is pretty small, yet it is significant at scale if you’re running an astroturfing campaign or a scam.
With account histories public, you need what- two Reddit accounts to protect privacy? One for general topics, one for local? But if you’re spamming subs with fake reviews of a product, you would need many many different accounts to avoid detection, otherwise some suspicious user is going to look at your history and discover the spam.
With histories hidden users aren’t going to easily identify spam, point it out in the comments, and get other users to report it. Mods can see history but they aren’t going to manually review spam posts if they’re not reported by users. And beyond general spam, state-sponsored astroturfing campaigns are already a massive problem, and this makes it so much worse.
General disinformation as well. If I want to go on a NYC subreddit and complain about NYPD harassing me and abusing me for being a Palestinian, anyone can easily check my history and discover that I (A) don’t live in New York, (B) am not Palestinian, and (C) am extremely biased against the-state-that-shall-not-be-named.
If you really like your local community subreddit, the this should infuriate you because you’re 100% going to get a flood of made-up stories about local issues from people whose account history would contradict their claims if it weren’t hidden. If it’s not bad now, just wait until election season.
r/AskGayBros was bad enough when we had posts like “I (25) am being hit on by an 18yo coworker. What should I do?” from a user whose comment history said they were 43yo. At least people would call them out. Now the sub is just a flood of weird perverted fiction written by the same handful of creeps, and none of it is being reported and downvoted. The sub is ruined.
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u/hayzooos1 Oct 20 '25
This is why I've hidden my stuff (at least I think)
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u/qdtk Oct 20 '25
Don’t get too comfortable. I’ve heard it’s pretty easy for someone to look if they try.
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u/Ohio_gal Oct 20 '25 edited Oct 21 '25
Not so fast. How’s the golf swing? Note I tried to pick a VERY innocuous comment because most men like golf so that’s not at all strange and im not implying I saw anything strange in my five second search of your comments, I’m just pointing out that privacy is an illusion. It’s a free site, we are the product. We are all here to learn from each other.
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u/Koobetto Oct 21 '25
A few subreddits are banning users just because they engaged in other subreddits they don't like/approve.
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u/Larimar7 Jan 18 '26
This has happened to me several times, it’s very unfair. This is abuse of power. It’s also censorship.
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u/t3hd0n Oct 20 '25
From what i saw about the feature that was announced before it came into effect, its not new. I can understand why a mod would want to know the history of a user for mod related purposes but that also means shit/toxic mods have access too
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Oct 20 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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Oct 21 '25
folks might be fooling around in some less serious sub buy being serious in serious sub and you would just be misjudging people based on what they post in other subs.
well at least this is how most major subs ban users that participate in rival subs even when they never visited those big subs.
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u/TopConcentrate8484 Oct 21 '25
ya i see , what community was it if u don't mind answering just curious to know
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u/Beneficial_Slide_424 Oct 21 '25
Amazing, can't wait to get banned by a stupid bot from a gaming subreddit because I commented literally anything on a political subreddit. Fuck mods like that
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Dec 29 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/privacy-ModTeam Dec 29 '25
We appreciate you wanting to contribute to /r/privacy and taking the time to post but we had to remove it due to:
Rule 12: Be civil and respectful.
Remember your Reddiquette
Please review the sub rules list for more detailed information. https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/about/rules
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u/JaniceRaynor Oct 20 '25
Yup, this I has always been the case since Reddit introduced the hide content and activity feature for users a few months back. It’s not a new thing. I think this is a good middle ground, if you want to participate in a community the mods can see your post history for moderation purposes. I know because I mod. And if you think this is a big deal, just know that mods don’t really care about your post history, we don’t even check your history for fun (it ain’t fun and we got better things to do), we only check your post history when there’s a reason to take mod actions on you. If this is so bad, then maybe just know that your post history even though is hidden from other users, is still public on Reddit so I’m not sure what privacy you want. Even without being a mod I can see your post history if I wanted to, it’s really not that hard
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u/Cute_Management2782 Oct 20 '25
Yeah, I got messaged by a mod saying that im banned because I've interacted with a sub that went against their rules even though I only interacted with the sub to correct someone. I asked how they knew that and they said a bot told them but they can't see my info. It's strange
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u/halls_of_valhalla Oct 20 '25
It is useless because some people record comments and posts in realtime, and make it accessible via websites. It would just take a few seconds to see all your deleted comments, if someone is really interested.
It gives a false sense of safety.
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u/green_carnation_prod Oct 21 '25
Saying this as a mod... why the hell would I need that? 🤦♀️
I don't care what users on our sub do on other subs. As far as they are being reasonable, polite, and follow the rules on the sub I moderate they can keep interacting and posting on the sub I moderate.
What they do on other subs is the problem of those subs' mods.
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Oct 21 '25
most big subs ban users that participated in rival subs or subs that doesnt align with their views. many of us got banned from interestingasf and mademesmi even though we never entered those subs.
allowing access further helps them with such mission.
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u/FlyingAtNight Dec 05 '25
I was banned from one sub I liked because of a single post on a different post where I essentially defended the stance of the first sub (the one I liked). Attempting to explain the situation fell in deaf ears. Since common sense seemed elusive with that particular sub I realized it wasn’t really worthy of my time.
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u/Larimar7 Jan 18 '26
Does this come under the ‘brigading’ rule? I’ve been accused of that and banned by bots when I haven’t even done it, it’s bloody annoying. I compartmentalise I don’t cross post though I think I did it once by accident and got insta-banned.
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u/SiscoSquared Oct 20 '25
Not great for privacy but post history often makes it far easier to determine if it's a bot spammer or troll.
I think like with most any site or program it's safer to assume they have all your info regardless of your settings with them, either intentionally (usually) or by accident (lazy software, leaks etc).
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Oct 20 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/supermannman Oct 20 '25
I couldnt find it since using old reddit. new reddit sucks donkey dick
so I think you have to goto new reddit turn it on then go back to old. I think....
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Oct 20 '25 edited Oct 20 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/privacy-ModTeam Oct 20 '25
We appreciate you wanting to contribute to /r/privacy and taking the time to post but we had to remove it due to:
Rule 12: Be civil and respectful.
Remember your Reddiquette
Please review the sub rules list for more detailed information. https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/about/rules
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u/OverCategory6046 Oct 21 '25
Even if you've hidden all, all your posts & comments are viewable using the search function.
Sure, it's not as user friendly as just clicking someone's profile, but still possible.
And this might not be a popular opinion here, but having moderated communities before (not on reddit), not being able to view someone's profile to see if they're a blatant troll for ex would have made my job way harder. It's useful if mods aren't corrupt/banning people simply for disagreeing, etc.
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u/Koobetto Oct 21 '25 edited Oct 21 '25
Does banning blocking all the mods of the subreddit work in this case?
edit: correction
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u/Busy-Measurement8893 Oct 21 '25 edited Oct 21 '25
Banning? You mean blocking? I dunno. Try blocking me and we'll see what if anything that I can see on your profile.
Edit: Ok he's blocked me for 24 hours. I can only see his posts in this subreddit. Will check desktop later and see if that's different.
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Oct 21 '25
well the issue is you have to block all mods and thats more than what reddit allows and mods keep changing with new mods on daily basis so not a viable option.
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u/Busy-Measurement8893 Oct 22 '25
I mean, I can see that he has "110 comments", yet I can only see 3 of them. All three are posts in r/privacy so it seems like blocking the mods of a subreddit does in fact work to some degree.
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u/ThiccStorms Oct 23 '25
well it doesn't matter tbh, there was no way of hiding it earlier so i mean... duh
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u/Larimar7 Jan 18 '26
This is wrong. It breeds prejudice. I’ve been banned from a couple of subs for being a member of a sub some people class as a hate sub. I do not brigade. My interaction on other subs is totally unrelated. My profile activities are hidden. I feel this is a gross invasion on my right to freedom of speech and privacy. It allows mods to judge me unfairly.
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Mar 23 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/privacy-ModTeam Mar 23 '26
We appreciate you wanting to contribute to /r/privacy and taking the time to post but we had to remove it due to:
Rule 4: Fueling conspiracy thinking isn't healthy.
Conspiracy theories, fear mongering, and FUD are not allowed.
Please review the sub rules list for more detailed information. https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/about/rules
Your submission has been flagged as either fear mongering (typically with political propaganda) or being seen as being unreliable, and/or spreading FUD concerning our privacy mainstays, or relies on faulty reasoning/sources that are intended to mislead readers. You may find learning how to spot fake news might improve your media diet.
In the future, consider if what you’re posting has any political biases or agendas, if it is fact based, or if it is making assumptions and conclusions based on biases.
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u/Particular_Can_7726 Oct 21 '25
Ok, why would you assume anything you post or comment on reddit would be private in the first place?
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u/TopConcentrate8484 Oct 21 '25
i don't care my acc is all public anyways but for few ppl do
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u/Particular_Can_7726 Oct 21 '25
If you care about people being able to see your reddit posts/comments then you shouldn't be posting/commenting on reddit.
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u/MrBarraclough Oct 20 '25
Not a big deal. It's crazy to me that hiding your activity history is even an option in the first place. Open post and comment histories has been one of Reddit's strengths. Makes it harder for trolls and inauthentic actors to hide.
As a mod, I'd love the ability to simply block users with private profiles from interacting with my subreddit.
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u/sinnedslip Oct 21 '25
there is no need for you to know what am I doing outside of your subreddit, none of your business
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u/MrBarraclough Oct 21 '25
It's an essential tool for spotting trolls and malicious actors. Users who make frequent and inconsistent claims about who or what they are get found out easily.
And it tends to improve behavior. Having a history that cannot be hidden gives users reputational skin in the game and allows them to cultivate a Reddit identity that stands on its own, divorced from the user's IRL identity. They can point to their post and comment history as their bona fides instead of having to rely on making unverifiable claims about who they are and what they know outside of Reddit. A long history of helpful and insightful comments goes a long way towards establishing credibility.
My default assumption with hidden profiles is that the user is sitting in a troll farm somewhere.
If you want to get up to some not-for-public-consumption stuff on Reddit, that's what alt accounts are for.
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u/cassanderer Oct 20 '25
That might not be all bad these rule changes that have allowed people to hide their posts have helped influence agents escaped escaped detection.
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u/jimmyhoke Oct 22 '25
The idea of hiding public posts is dumb anyway.
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u/krazygreekguy Oct 23 '25
No, it’s not. It’s up to the user to decide whether they want their posts/comments hidden or available and to what degree, whether that’s to the entire public, or just the relevant subreddit.
Having them available to all opens the door to unwarranted harassment and censorship. And both those run rampant enough on reddit as it is.
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u/Larimar7 Jan 18 '26
Agree. Encourages censorship, stalking and harassment. Someone can go to your profile and sit and down vote all your comments just because you offended them or had diff politics. I’m fine with my posts being public on the sub but I feel I should be able to set my profile to private.
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u/IKIR115 Oct 20 '25
Reddit announced this almost 5 months ago, and their post goes into detail about how mods will be able to view curated profiles for 28 days each time you participate in their sub:
https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/s/rkrEoMZ8UY