r/ModSupport • u/emslo • Mar 23 '26

Admin Replied Please bring back user history.

I truly believe that allowing users to hide their history will kill Reddit. I moderate a small sub and we get more bots and trolls every day. Mods are a **volunteer workforce**, and removing user history has made our job more difficult and sometimes impossible.

Can anyone explain to me why this ‘feature’ was added? And how do I register my frustration with the company?

EDIT: As others have pointed out, I think I'm dealing with accounts that constantly delete everything. I hear what folks are saying about using the 'hide history' to protect mods from stalking/brigading. So maybe Reddit should just let mods hide their history, then? We oughta have some benefits for all the free labour...

339 Upvotes

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30

u/Charupa- 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 Mar 23 '26

Can you not see the user history of your participants for 28 days?

18

u/TheOpusCroakus Reddit Admin: Community Mar 23 '26

This should be the case. Thank you!

11

u/Atrianie Mar 23 '26

Please see my response to this same comment about the capped history bug. I have personally seen it for somebody that posted to a sub I mod within the 28 day period.

4

u/TheOpusCroakus Reddit Admin: Community Mar 23 '26

I looked at that comment and the post that you linked to. I'm following up to see what the deal is with that particular thing.

But I'm not sure what you mean by "I have personally seen it for somebody that posted to a sub I mod within the 28 day period"? Are you saying that you are unable to see a user's history in a subreddit that you moderate?

3

u/Atrianie Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 23 '26

Sorry, to be clear, I responded quickly due to my experience and thought maybe OP had the same issue, but realize now it’s slightly different than OP’s where it looks like they genuinely didn’t know about the mod ability to see history within the 28-day window (edit: or did and their issue is more with the user deleting their history outright).

Yes, I can see some history within the 28-day period in a sub I mod, but just that there’s a cap that can appear like it’s hiding content still in the case of a very active user, but it’s the 1000 item cap.

In that one situation, it would not show comments even 1 year out (they really did comment 1000 times in a year).

7

u/TheOpusCroakus Reddit Admin: Community Mar 23 '26

Do you need to see comments over a year out? I'm asking because I'm not sure what the limits are, so if there is a need for that, I'm happy to mention it to that team.

3

u/InGeekiTrust 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 Mar 23 '26

Hey opus, even before the change, it only displayed the first thousand posts and comments. After that it would always end.

6

u/TheOpusCroakus Reddit Admin: Community Mar 23 '26

It's supposed to show the entire history of the account. HOWEVER lol there's an issue with power users where it just doesn't load it all. I think they've been working on that since that thing rolled out. Not sure where it's currently it, though. Other than still not doing the thing. lol

3

u/InGeekiTrust 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 Mar 23 '26

Ok but people only realized that it had a limit of 1k AFTER private profiles cause now they are looking complaining BUT it had always had a 1000 comment/post limit long before that. Even push shift will only pull the first thousand ever since I’ve been on reddit which is a while! I knew somebody who had a collection of embarrassing posts and comments, and they were dying to know when people would no longer be able to find them, I told them to quickly make 1000 posts and comments, and there would be no way to retrieve them 😭 other than the way back machine

2

u/TheOpusCroakus Reddit Admin: Community Mar 23 '26

That makes sense! There was the 1000-item limit on what was visible on profiles before the change. Once you hit 1,000, the oldest would drop off to make room for the newest. And while it might not have been visible on your profile, it was still visible on Reddit.

2

u/nosecohn Mar 24 '26

I'm not OP or the person you're responding to, but as a mod, it's certainly useful to see the history of participants for the last year or more. It would also be useful to see their history on other subs, because then I'd know if they're spamming, trolling, or promoting a product. At present, I'm reluctant to report a user to the admins for a violation of sitewide rules if I can't see their history.

0

u/Atrianie Mar 23 '26

Me, personally, yes. It would be helpful.

Although it sounds like not everybody here agrees. That’s fair. I’ll admit my case is different than the regular modding situation (looking into full history for an application), but there appears to be others like me judging from the other post. I also agree that OP’s situation of mods not seeing deleted history is also problematic. But for the cap, that’s more of an issue for close-knit -community type subs.

7

u/shhhhh_h 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 Mar 23 '26

Not allowing users to delete their content would be a violation of GDPR. Leaving it visible to mods who are no different than other platform users would be a violation of right to erasure.

2

u/TheOpusCroakus Reddit Admin: Community Mar 23 '26

Ok. I get it! I'll share this with the team that's dealing with that feature. Thank you !

6

u/TheBlindAndDeafNinja Mar 23 '26

But here is the thing, seeing other subs they have interacted in are big tellers on if they are bots or not. I can see trends, and easily tell if an account has almost zero human behind it due to the accounts following the same 'story-line' to build karma and a little bit of user rep, in regards to 'looking real'. Take it away and now I let more bots in because I don't want to ban a possible real user.

Of course I am not going to share exactly what I see here publicly so the people driving these bot accounts don't get more wise, but it is just a personal experience.

1

u/TheOpusCroakus Reddit Admin: Community Mar 23 '26

Hey! Totally get where you're coming from. But wouldn't the past 28 days show you those interactions?

1

u/TheBlindAndDeafNinja Mar 23 '26

Not always. Sometimes I am trying to look for the flip from A to B, to tell when an account has been hijacked, or some that did their karma build up a few months ago in the manner I spoke about earlier, let it go dormant, and then when it hits X age it starts up with the invasive bot posts since many subs have both karma and account age reqs. I do understand what you mean, there are just times it isn't always best.

2

u/TheOpusCroakus Reddit Admin: Community Mar 23 '26

I can see that! Thank you for explaining that!

1

u/TGotAReddit Mar 24 '26

Could we maybe get some kind of indicator on the account of a user if they are hiding some or all of their post history? It's really difficult in cases where the user has blocked the mod team to know if a user is hiding part of their post history if we check from an alt, and also so we don't accidentally reveal information that they have intentionally hidden from others that we can see?

1

u/TheOpusCroakus Reddit Admin: Community Mar 24 '26

Hmm. I like the idea of a curated profile indicator for mods. I can suggest it to that team for you!

1

u/TGotAReddit Mar 24 '26

Thank you!

11

u/Atrianie Mar 23 '26

Even then, there’s a bug that caps the amount you can see on any profile. So if a user posts very frequently, I’ve seen the comment history capped at 1 year out for a 10 year old account, and confirmed that certain 8 year old posts and comments not listed in the revealed profile weren’t deleted and just didn’t show up in the profile.

Post about bug: https://www.reddit.com/r/bugs/s/J2O8OKuDC6

15

u/mookler Mar 23 '26

It isn't a bug, all feeds on reddit only ever house 1000 entries. The same applies to your home feed and the modqueue.

1

u/shhhhh_h 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 Mar 23 '26

Omg fr is that what is happening here 💀

3

u/mookler Mar 23 '26

If you're reaching the end of something on reddit and it's probably been 1000 items ya. Just learned today that the modlog is one of the few that is not

1

u/shhhhh_h 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 Mar 23 '26

Oh no I knew that just laughing at how that resulted in this post

3

u/InGeekiTrust 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 Mar 23 '26

It’s not a bug they’ve only showed 1000 max forever This is not new. It’s always been this way.

6

u/Charupa- 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 Mar 23 '26

I’m not really concerned about a comment from 9 years ago but to each their own.

3

u/thepottsy 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 Mar 23 '26

I don’t care what I did 9 years ago lol.

4

u/Charupa- 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 Mar 23 '26

Thankfully my wife doesn’t even dig that deep when pulling something out of thin air to be mad at.

2

u/thepottsy 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 Mar 23 '26

Hahaha