Reddit on Tuesday announced a brand new function that can provide its customers extra privateness in the case of what’s shared on their person profiles.
The corporate says it’s rolling out an replace that can introduce a “Content material and Exercise” setting that permits customers to determine which content material from the subreddits they take part in will seem on their profiles. This contains each their posting and commenting historical past.
By default, all posts and feedback will stay seen, as earlier than. Nevertheless, the brand new setting permits customers to cover all their public posts and feedback, together with these made immediately on their profiles.
Alternately, customers can determine to selectively show posts and feedback from particular communities on their profile, whereas holding others hidden.
The setting is out there below a brand new “Curate your profile” part, the place customers can management their content material’s visibility. An choice to toggle on or off NSFW content material and exercise can also be out there, as is a Followers toggle to point out or cover follower depend.
The replace provides a layer of privateness to Reddit that wasn’t beforehand out there.
Beforehand, many Reddit customers created “throwaway” accounts after they wished to ask extra private questions. However as Reddit morphs into extra of an ad-focused tech company post-IPO, it seemingly prefers that person information — like engagement and pursuits — stays related to a single person profile for higher advert focusing on.
The function’s addition might additionally encourage customers to take part extra on the location, as they’ll now know that they’ll considerably obscure their exercise from public view.
For instance, customers could need to chime in or ask questions on a subject of a extra delicate nature, like relationship or courting recommendation, or a well being subject they’re going through. Earlier than, they could have chosen to simply learn by way of others’ posts however not interact immediately with the intention to preserve the knowledge from displaying on their very own person profiles.
Reddit says that the choice to cover or show posts and feedback is out there solely on a per-community foundation, not on the particular person submit or remark degree. That makes the settings simpler to handle, even when it means you may’t decide and select which particular feedback and posts present up and which don’t.
Nonetheless, customers ought to know that the curation possibility doesn’t imply they’ve true privateness. Their username will nonetheless seem subsequent to their posts and feedback within the communities themselves. Plus, some moderators will nonetheless have entry to a person’s public submit and remark historical past for 28 days, whatever the person’s content material visibility settings, Reddit says.
This entry is useful to moderators who could must evaluate a person’s historical past after they submit or remark, in addition to after they ship modmail, like be part of requests, or requests to hitch a restricted neighborhood.
Profile house owners can even be capable of quickly see a person’s full submit and remark historical past if one other person feedback immediately on their profile submit, the corporate notes.
Alongside this transformation, Reddit launched up to date private exercise summaries, which give an summary of a person’s exercise, together with their Karma depend, whole contributions, account age, and lively communities. The latter shall be based mostly on their Content material and exercise settings.