You Can Now Manage Your Public Reddit Profile
Reddit is giving users more control over what activity other users can see on their public profiles. The new “curate my profile” feature allows users to selectively show or hide posting and commenting activity, as well as subscriber counts and NSFW content and communities.
What’s Changed in Reddit Profile Settings
With the new Content & Activity settings, Reddit users can hide all public posts and comments or selectively display activity from certain subreddits on their profiles while keeping others hidden. Users can also hide subscriber counts, as well as NSFW content and communities, from their profiles.
Previously, all posts and comments were visible on a user’s public profile, which remains the default. While users are largely anonymous, anyone could see their activity, such as their posting history and what communities they were participating in. As Engadget notes , this allowed the broader community to hold users accountable for bad behavior, and some users are concerned that the ability to hide activity on a public profile will make it harder to police such behavior.
On the other hand, TechCrunch points out that the ability to limit the visibility of public posts could encourage greater participation. Users who wanted to participate in communities on sensitive topics could create throwaway accounts to keep that activity from showing up on their profile, or choose not to participate at all.
Note that hiding activity on your profile will not hide your username from posts and comments in the community itself. You also can’t hide individual posts or comments from your profile — you can only show or hide all activity from the entire community. Moderators may still have access to your history even if you change your visibility settings.
How to Change Your Reddit Profile Visibility
According to Reddit’s announcement , the feature began rolling out on June 3. However, it may not be available to all users right away (I haven’t yet), so be sure to update to the latest version of the app and keep an eye out for a new “Manage Profile” menu that will appear under “View Profile” when you open the profile panel in the app.
When you select Curate your profile, you’ll see options to turn on or off NSFW content and follower count. You can also click Content and activity , which will give you a pop-up to show everything, hide everything, or customize what appears on your profile. If you select Customize , you’ll be able to select or deselect specific followers to show or hide activity in those communities.