Reddit did WHAT?
huge number of people who make controversial statements (particularly those who are pro-russia) have their profiles set to hidden so you can’t see what else they have posted
That is very much the first people I would expect making use of that feature, yes.
I use it, just because some people’s first reaction in an argument is to look you up. While if you hide it then googling you takes longer and is not ordered properly. Hell a while back I replied to someone about my opinion on something and the first thing he said is “a guy who’s into x hobby can’t seriously have valid opinions”. So yes, since then, my profile is private.
Then you’re not one of the bad actors I’m concerned about. The problem with this change is that there’s no way for other people to tell the difference. If I have suspicions about the motivations of the person (assuming they are a person) I’m interacting with, and I cannot disprove those suspicious to my own satisfaction, that leaves me with two rational options: 1) Blind faith, which in an anonymous Internet context is particularly unjustifiable, or 2) To assume bad faith and act accordingly.
This has some really unfortunate consequences.
Absolutely horrid feature. Supposedly it’s to protect vulnerable people’s privacy if they post in certain communities, but if they truly wanted that to be how it’s used, they’d have limited the ability to apply the feature only to subreddits where mods have specifically coordinated with the admins to get approved as places where vulnerable people are posting. Or, and here’s a shocker, they could just rely on the tried-and-tested method of using alt accounts. Instead, bots and trolls just hide their entire post history from people.
Now, supposedly, mods can see the full, unhidden history of any user who has recently posted in their subreddits. Which is good. But the number of other good-faith users being obstructed by this change is huge. It’s overall a massive failure from Reddit.
Besides, you can still see their post history simply by searching
"u/username" site:reddit.comIt gives people a false sense of security
Bots only upvote their own bot circle or content which makes their owners $$$$.
Real human concerns will only be heard if they align with $$$$.
We are remaking the whole world for bots.
Congrats for the moderator of /r/Jailbait for becoming a billionaire! /s
Most of Reddit was bots interacting with bots a while ago already.
The site makes most of its money selling ads. The value of that ad space is based on user metrics.
Many users are now fake. They are actively hiding this fact.
Apropos of nothing, the company has a $34 billion market cap.
Why is anyone paying for adverts that no one will see though? Surely adverts only have value if it brings in sales.
Would be amusing to see the entire advertising market crash tbh.
You think that in 2025 companies with large media budgets are buying digital ads and just saying “well fuck it maybe we’ll make money on it”?
They track EVERYTHING. From the impression to the click tot he purchase, and there are trackers and attribution platforms by the hundreds out there to help them understand what the ROI they’re receiving on those ads are.
Companies are buying ads because people are buying products.
Even if the site is 90% bots there are enough real people using the site to make buying ads profitable.
Yeah.
To misquote a paper, “attention is all you need.” It’s like the motto of the 2020s.
