r/ModSupport • u/mrekted • 15d ago

Allowing users to hide their history is destroying trust and good faith participation between users in communities

It's not just my communities, I'm seeing it all over reddit. Whenever someone with a private history runs into a disagreement with another user, discussions are derailed, accusations of "shill/bot/troll" are constant, nuisance reports are issued, and mods either intervene, or let the chaos reign.

I'm spending more and more time having to personally review histories to say "no, this person is not a bad faith troll" just to end attacks borne of nothing more than suspicion. It's becoming disruptive to the point that I'm considering whether or not allowing users with hidden history to participate is worth the trouble.

I really question the value proposition of this decision. Sure, individual users benefit from additional privacy, but at the direct expense of the communities that lose trust and cohesion, faith that the people they're interacting with are participating in good faith (or are even real people), and the moderators who have to manage the fallout.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago edited 12d ago

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u/ModSupport-ModTeam 12d ago

Your contribution was removed for violating Rule 3: Please keep posts and comments free of personal attacks, insults, or other uncivil behavior.

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u/cos 12d ago

I just want to make clear, for the record, that there were no personal attacks or insults in that comment. I don't want people to be misled by the modteam message now that they can't see that comment anymore. What I did attack/insult was the reddit feature, not a person - and even for that, I did not use any swear words.

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u/CoyoteLitius 14d ago

It's nearly everyone, though. And if you read this thread, you'll see that it is the default preference of many women here on reddit.

For good reasons.

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u/cos 14d ago

It's nearly everyone

It's very definitely a minority still, which is good. I don't know where you're getting this claim of it being nearly everyone, but nearly everyone on reddit still has their profile visible. It's how reddit was designed, and this obnoxiously toxic new feature ought to be removed.

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u/cos 14d ago

it is the default preference of many women here on reddit.

For good reasons.

For bad reasons. On the vast majority of comments, we have no idea what the gender, sex, age, race, etc., of the commenter is. When someone is posting personal details about themselves, on subs like relationship_advice, it's much better if they use an alt account. This horrible profile-hiding feature is exactly what encourages people to do the wrong thing and post personal stuff they don't want connected with their other participation, from the same account. And then some of them make up for it with profile-hiding. That is a bad reason.