https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/cevm31/update_regarding_user_profile_transparency/
created by mjmayank on 18/07/2019 at 17:37 UTC*
16897 upvotes, 157 top-level comments (showing 25)
Edit (2019/11/26): This feature has been delayed until 2020
Edit (2020/03/30): We released a feature where you will get a push notification when you get a new follower. If you have your push notifications enabled on our mobile apps, or desktop notifications enabled, you should receive one. We are working on expanding this feature to all users, even without push notifications. The follower list is still delayed until later this year.
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 19th, 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
Edit: updated Aug 29th to Aug 19th to match release date of the start of the feature rollout
Comment by Top_Hat_Tomato at 18/07/2019 at 19:54 UTC
182 upvotes, 2 direct replies
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.
Comment by Splurch at 18/07/2019 at 17:39 UTC
1257 upvotes, 6 direct replies
TIL Reddit has a follow user feature.
Comment by [deleted] at 18/07/2019 at 22:49 UTC
132 upvotes, 3 direct replies
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’
Comment by Sin2K at 18/07/2019 at 17:42 UTC
1332 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Will users be able to block people from following them?
Comment by bathrobehero at 18/07/2019 at 18:09 UTC
282 upvotes, 2 direct replies
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.
Comment by [deleted] at 18/07/2019 at 21:07 UTC
325 upvotes, 3 direct replies
[deleted]
Comment by N0_Tr3bbl3 at 18/07/2019 at 17:57 UTC
894 upvotes, 7 direct replies
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.
Comment by [deleted] at 18/07/2019 at 17:42 UTC*
2370 upvotes, 19 direct replies
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
Comment by wantagh at 18/07/2019 at 18:28 UTC
380 upvotes, 3 direct replies
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.
Comment by RadioactiveFruitCup at 18/07/2019 at 18:30 UTC*
3406 upvotes, 3 direct replies
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.
1: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19
I don’t think the solution to any problem should be *“put up with it, or leave”*. That seems terribly defeatist and wasteful.
Comment by hamza1311 at 18/07/2019 at 20:29 UTC
227 upvotes, 3 direct replies
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
Comment by [deleted] at 18/07/2019 at 19:37 UTC
157 upvotes, 1 direct replies
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!
Comment by [deleted] at 18/07/2019 at 18:25 UTC
386 upvotes, 4 direct replies
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.
Comment by KTGS at 18/07/2019 at 19:53 UTC
595 upvotes, 6 direct replies
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".
Comment by TheRovingCynic at 18/07/2019 at 22:00 UTC*
239 upvotes, 3 direct replies
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).
Comment by ThiefofNobility at 18/07/2019 at 19:05 UTC
33 upvotes, 0 direct replies
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?
Comment by manualCAD at 18/07/2019 at 17:42 UTC
230 upvotes, 0 direct replies
And there it is. Another step in turning reddit to full on social media profiles/pages.
Comment by funderbunk at 18/07/2019 at 18:52 UTC
62 upvotes, 2 direct replies
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.
Comment by Jagtasm at 18/07/2019 at 18:14 UTC
28 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This sounds like a terrible idea. I dont want reddit to become the new facebook.
Comment by 101100110101010 at 18/07/2019 at 19:28 UTC
27 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Stop turning this into a completely different website. The day you take away old reddit is the day I never come back.
Comment by BardOfLimericks at 18/07/2019 at 17:45 UTC
111 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Question: why was this seen as necessary?
Comment by Alona02 at 18/07/2019 at 17:41 UTC
179 upvotes, 2 direct replies
TIL you can follow users.
I'd never even noticed that option before. I rarely even look at people's profiles.
Comment by Tsunami812 at 18/07/2019 at 17:48 UTC
23 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Cant wait for "follow me on reddit"
Comment by Buckeye70 at 18/07/2019 at 17:59 UTC
106 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Who the hell thinks we want "followers" or want to follow anyone??
You're going to Digg yourself, reddit. Be damn careful!
Comment by hjqusai at 18/07/2019 at 18:04 UTC
224 upvotes, 3 direct replies
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.