Reddit on Tuesday introduced a brand new characteristic that can provide its customers extra privateness in relation to 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 enables customers to resolve 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. Nonetheless, 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 resolve to selectively show posts and feedback from particular communities on their profile, whereas retaining others hidden.
The setting is offered beneath 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 obtainable, as is a Followers toggle to point out or disguise follower rely.
The replace provides a layer of privateness to Reddit that wasn’t obtainable earlier than.
Beforehand, many Reddit customers created “throwaway” accounts once they wished to ask extra private questions. However as Reddit morphs into extra of an ad-focused tech firm post-IPO, it possible prefers that person information — like engagement and pursuits — stays related to a single person profile for higher advert concentrating on.
The characteristic’s addition might additionally encourage customers to take part extra on the positioning, as they’ll now know that they’ll considerably obscure their exercise from public view.
For instance, customers could wish to chime in or ask questions on a subject of a extra delicate nature, like relationship or relationship recommendation, or a well being concern they’re dealing with. Earlier than, they might have chosen to simply learn by means of others’ posts however not interact immediately in an effort to hold the knowledge from displaying on their very own person profiles.
Reddit says that the choice to cover or show posts and feedback is offered solely on a per-community foundation, not on the particular person publish or remark stage. That makes the settings simpler to handle, even when it means you may’t choose and select which particular feedback and posts present up and which don’t.
Nonetheless, customers ought to know that the curation choice 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 publish 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 have to evaluation a person’s historical past once they publish or remark, in addition to once they ship “modmail,” like be part of requests, or requests to affix a restricted neighborhood.
Profile house owners will even be capable of quickly see a person’s full publish and remark historical past if one other person feedback immediately on their profile publish, the corporate notes.
Alongside this variation, Reddit launched up to date private exercise summaries, which give an summary of a person’s exercise, together with their Karma rely, complete contributions, account age, and lively communities. The latter will likely be primarily based on their Content material and exercise settings.
