Update regarding user profile transparency
Update regarding user profile transparency
Hi everyone,
We collect a lot of feedback from you all, and one theme we’ve heard consistently from users is that many of you want more visibility when users follow you. As we move the new profiles out of beta, we wanted to share a transparency change we are making. In the coming months, we will allow people to see which users follow them.
We know that this may be a change from existing expectations, so we want to give you time to update your settings before moving forward with this. In the immediate future (starting Aug 29th, 2019), this will only affect new follows made. In about 3 months, we will make it possible to see your full list of followers. This would include follows made while profiles were in beta.
We plan to send a PM to all affected users, but wanted to make this public post as well so that you aren’t surprised when you receive it. To be clear, the usernames will only be visible to the user who was followed. No one will be able to look up your full list of subscriptions/follows and no one else will be able to see a list of followers of a profile.
If you are someone who follows other users, please take a second to examine your subscription/follow list and make sure you are comfortable with those users being aware that you follow them. If you are someone who has followers, we will make another post when the ability to view your followers has been released. We’ll stick around in the comments for a bit if you have questions. If there are other features you’d like to see for profiles, please let us know!
Thanks!
Edit: updated 8/29 to Aug 29th, 2019 as it's a more clear date format
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I appreciate the staged rollout, but I don’t see anything explicitly addressing sock-puppets. If I want to stalk you, and you block me, can’t I just go register a throwaway and follow you that way?
Without the ability to lock down follows or disable follows from the root user rather than the account, you’re going to have dog-whistle harassment and users that operate in controversial spaces will end up with a chore of constantly manually blocking followers.
Could we get a bulk-block tool, or rules (all redditors active in XYZ sub, Redditors with insufficient karma / account age?)
Best yet- shadowban blocking so the following party is not alerted to the block.
Thanks for the feedback! Our existing block feature is built with de-escalation in mind. That being said, we are planning more user safety features coming up, but don't have anything to announce right now. This sort of feedback is super useful in helping us shape our roadmap though, so we really appreciate it.
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Hi /u/mjmayank,
Quick question -- will these changes apply to the old "friends" feature on the legacy site? In other words, if someone goes to my legacy profile page and hits that green "+ friends" button, will I be able to see them as one of my followers? Or is that "friends" function being kept separate from "followers"?
Thanks for reading!
As an aside, I really like the friends feature -- it's nice to be able to view friends' posts when I choose to by visiting /r/friends, without having them hit my front page as subscriptions. I know it's an old feature, but I'm really hoping it'll stick around for those of us that still want to use it (regardless of whether it's covered under the transparency changes you all are making).
It doesn't. Friends is a different feature than follow.
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Yes, you will be able to block the users who are following you
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Username checks out
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It sounds like you collected feedback from users with followers and they said they wanted to be able to see who was following them. But did you get any feedback from users who follow a lot of people, but don't have followers themselves? It seems like a somewhat one sided feature, people with a lot of followers benefit heavily but people without followers don't get the benefit of seeing who other people are following.
Also, will this information be available through the API?
But did you get any feedback from users who follow a lot of people, but don't have followers themselves?
We collected feedback from both sets of users. Most users were not aware that following another user was private. The users who were concerned requested a notification of the change and a time period to update their settings.
Also, will this information be available through the API?
It will not be available in the API
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I'm really unsure if I feel like I can use Reddit any further after this update. I come to reddit so I don't have to deal with interpersonal drama and I'd really rather have a place where I can say something and have anons agree/disagree with me.
It's more comforting in the fact that your thoughts and opinions can resonate across the world without having to tie your name to them, in my time on Reddit, I've come to the conclusion that if I put my vibe out there, usually, it will come back to me. Through others resonating with it across the planet, I can seed ideas across the planet, this is really cool. If we remove the masks of anonymity, it just takes away this place where I can say what's on my mind, even if it's wrong, because the worth and value of your ideas are then based on how many followers you have.
If in 3 months the front page is just filled with "influencer" reddit accounts (i.e. gallowboob), then I have no reason to stay here anymore. If the thoughts and ideas of only a few hundred people out of hundreds of thousands are on the front page, that just makes it easier to manufacture the tones and positions of the rest of Reddit. We lose what makes us unique, a place where we can share ideas, and either be agreed with or shunned, and then being up/downdooted into oblivion. If "followers" are added we are only more prone to boosting the thoughts and ideas of very few, rather than the rest of the userbase.
I'm pretty scattered about this, I'm not sure if "all of us" desiring this is a good way to describe why this change is coming. This is the first I've even heard of user "profiles".
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Reddit was supposed to be anonymous. If you block someone from following you, they can easily go to your profile without being logged in and stalk you that way. Not feeding this information through API is completely BS. Why are you forcing me to use this app? It's not like I hate this app. Far from that actually. But having an open API that can be used to build 3rd party clients and then not feeding all the information through is it completely BS. First it was Reddit chat, and now this.
Reddit is a community, not a social media. Leave it like that. If I want to be on a social media, I'll go to Instagram. If I want to privately talk to people, I'll go to discord. If I want to take part in a community of people, I come to Reddit. Don't try to turn it into a social media. I'm not aware of any other place like Reddit where you can find communities about anything, talk about it, get help from people and much more. I don't like where this is going, and I think other redditors don't either
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Not being able to opt out of followers is really shitty. Reddit is not Facebook. I am here to be reasonably anonymous and that means I don’t want fucking anybody to follow my profile. Cut this shit out.
There’s a reason I have zero social media. It’s because social media is toxic and you should be ashamed of yourselves.
This isn’t about transparency at all. This is a thinly veiled “we’re going to be Facebook now but don’t worry because you can block people.”
Fuck that. No, thank you.
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I’m confident this has absolutely nothing to do with transparency.
This is one of the major prerequisite steps needed towards having profiles, of influencers and famous people, with those little blue check marks next to their name ala Twitter.
It also provides the linkages needed to understand, and subsequently sell, interest hives and associative data for advertising.
So, if you follow me, six months from now, based on associative interests, you’ll have clown porn related ads in your gmail. You’re welcome.
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Reddit has never been Facebook and there are plenty of us here because it offers an alternative to the issues on other social media sites. Please don't force followers on those of us who prefer our Reddit to be more of an "antisocial media."
Will there be a way to block your profile from being followed by others? We don't want to have to block every follower as they pop up, we want to turn off followers entirely.
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Looks like the overwhelming response is, please don't force this on those of us who don't want it. Does that factor in to your thinking on the process at all? Or do you think they're a minority you can afford to lose?
Is there a reason for having this feature? How does it benefit Reddit? You already have a decent platform as is, why change it? Do you think being more like Instagram will make more money?
Asking out of curiosity, not rhetorical.
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Translation:
We are doing a bunch of shit that our users don't want or need, without consulting them, because we can! We purchased Reddit thinking we could turn a great internet asset that people used to connect to each other into a great place for advertisers to connect with consumers, but it turns out we are horribly incompetent, and are now flailing around trying to add features and butchering the user experience in the hope that some of the shit we fling against the wall sticks! No, it's not optional!
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You know what’s weird here despite the ‘hanging around in the comments’ the admins haven’t replied to a single person asking why or showing a sign of dislike for this move. It would appear we aren’t the people reddit cares about, it’s clearly trying to appease someone who’s not the users commenting here. The whole tone of the message is ‘we know you won’t like it, but we’re doing it anyway’
make sure you are comfortable with those users being aware that you follow them
You know you're just encouraging people to have multiple accounts, right? It's so weird to me that you would make a statement like "make sure you're comfortable," meaning you clearly know your audience, but you're just doing this stuff anyway. I don't like these decisions at all, but I'm at least thankful that old.reddit.com still exists. Please never ever remove that feature.
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And you didn't make it so we can block people from following? Honestly with reddits format it doesn't even make sense, you're clearly just grasping as the straws of other social networks to try to stay relevant. How about you do what redditors want most and not what people from other social networks want most? Oh right, because redditors have never mattered to reddit, you only care about getting new users.
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Why is reddit turning into Facebook/Insta? We are here because of the anonymity. For God sake leave it this way.I highly doubt what you are claiming. Half of us don't know these new features and how come so many redditors become so particular about it
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Followup question:
Is there a meaningful "Block" feature -- where the signed-in user account that was blocked, can no longer see / vote / message / interact with the blocking user's content -- coming?
The current implementation of "block" on Reddit -- where the messages and notifications don't show up in my inbox -- isn't sufficient for situations where a group is threatening to harm me; If I never see their delivered threats, I can never take suitable steps to effectuate my own security / contact law enforcement / collect evidence for a lawsuit / report the behaviour to Reddit adminsitration. It doesn't do anything except prevent me from seeing low-level harassment and taking appropriate actions to prevent it from escalating to something worse.
When do we get a meaningful "Block user" feature?
Edit: already answered as on the roadmap with no commit date
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Why can't reddit just stay reddit instead of trying to copy other social platforms? The main reason many of us are here is because reddit isn't/wasn't like the others.
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I think the biggest issue here is the lack of understanding on what it means to be a follower:
If you follow someone, the posts they make to their profile is added to your home feed, just as if you "subscribed/joined" to a subreddit, but that subredddit is their "profile posts." Normal posts to other subreddits are only included if the follower happens to be subscribed to that community.
From my experience, most users on Reddit don't understand this difference (just look at the comments on this post) and they most likely never even post to their profile. I think that process should be clarified, although I'm not sure how, but it's definitely not clear.
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Which means brigading and troll stalking will be even more apparent, so what will be the rule changes to deal with that aside from whining to moderators when you see someone following you just to harass you?
Fuck you and your shitty new social network features.
Hi everyone,
We collect a lot of feedback from you all
...and then we wipe our asses with it, when we can't be bothered to just ignore it outright.
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Users: we don't want this.
Reddit : we have reviewed the community's views on the changes and determined that the changes will be universal as everyone wants them.
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Can we have a setting to just not let anyone follow us? Reddit seems to be turning more into "not reddit". This place seems more and more like Facebook/Twitter/Insta when it comes to the posts, comments, censoring content, etc.
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Actually, I don't want people to see what I comment on or any of that. I got away from Facebook because I don't have any anonymity on there. Basically I'll piss off a lot of friends. Reddit is my escape, and I wish I could tighten up the security on that end.
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So this follow feature on the new reddit, is it the same as “add user as friend” in old reddit?
Would user that I have added as friend would know that I added them as friend?
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TIL you can follow users.
I'd never even noticed that option before. I rarely even look at people's profiles.
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I don’t come on reddit to follow people. No one I know does.
You guys either have shit research or are just outright lying.
Who the hell thinks we want "followers" or want to follow anyone??
You're going to Digg yourself, reddit. Be damn careful!
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And there it is. Another step in turning reddit to full on social media profiles/pages.
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Dude no. We dont want that at all. We dont want this to be Facebook, Twitter, or instagram.
Cant you just keep reddit how it is?
How many users actually asked for this? This sounds more like a smart way of saying "we want to become more like Instagram and motivate you to get more followers".
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Why the fuck does reddit even need followers? I care about someone elses comments so much i need to read every time they say something? Its fucking retarded and will encourage stalking and bullying if you cant turn the feature off.
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So we can now follow the follower following us but they can also see us following them as a follower
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How about adding something that is genuinely useful? Like the ability to block certain subreddits from being shown to you? Or how about taking time to fix your mobile app? Seriously, is this what you guys have been doing? Working on a basic forum function that has existed for decades? Instead of controlling your advertisers, fixing your app, or actually moderating the site?
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This sounds like a terrible idea. I dont want reddit to become the new facebook.
If someone desperately needs followers on Reddit they should make a subreddit like all of the other porn models. There’s absolutely no reason for individuals to have followers on their u/ profile.
Stop turning this into a completely different website. The day you take away old reddit is the day I never come back.
Watch as all the 12 year olds start unfollowing porn accounts
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All we need is the ability to be followed or not. It accomplishes the exact same thing while maintaining anonymity. If everyone here knows this why don't you? People aren't here because they want it to be like every other social media they're here because reddit is unique in the very aspect that is being slowly gotten rid of.
We collect a lot of feedback from you all,
and ignore it and want to turn the site to myspace 2.0.
Reddit is a forum, not social media, stop trying to make it into myspace 2.0 pls
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This isn’t Facebook. I don’t want a profile.
Increasing this ‘feature’ will just make many users create new accounts more frequently
Reddit is trying to weasle into the social media space and its not going to work. Redditors are going to leave and youll just get facebook users switching over and be the new facebook. Then ofc the content goes downhill. And the site becomes shittier and shittier.
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Is this stuff only visible on new reddit? I am not switching to new reddit ever unless forced lol
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