Topic: [Feature] "Privacy Mode" should also hide edit history on the user's profile, or there should be a separate option for that.

Posted under General

Right out of the gate, I want to make clear that this edit history should still be visible to admins/staff on users' profiles, and the edits themselves visible to anyone when they inspect the history of an image itself. This proposal is ONLY about going to someone's profile and clicking "Post Changes" (or "Note Changes") in the right column.

I'm posting this on an account I made specifically so my primary one wouldn't be associated with this request (I might upload from here later, though), for reasons that I hope should be apparent.

Private faves are great; if I'd known about the feature I would've enabled it sooner so I could freely fav stuff I like. However, I also try to be a good citizen and make tag edits (and add notes/translation) when I come across an image that seems to need one. Right now it's trivial for the potential bad actor/busybody Privacy Mode is designed to protect against to simply go to the edit history on someone's profile instead and filter by {whatever evil "illegal" tag you want to nail them for} and see all of them. In my case, there's a fair few edits I've made to images tagged with cub, incest, gore, rape, etc.

Even if there's somewhat less of an avenue for abuse purely because I'm sure only a small fraction of users bother editing tags (even the ones who go the extra mile to comment on posts that they were tagged improperly and should have been on their blacklist!), it seems predictable that someone would do this, and preventable by allowing users to hide the post/note change history on their profile. Thanks for considering.

Updated

I mean, that would make it difficult to see if someone has been abusing the tags, wouldn't it?
The admins aren't going to go through individual profiles unless they had been reported. The users aren't going to report individual profiles unless they could see their tag edit history. Nobody is going to know there is widespread tagging abuse unless it's too late or they just happen across the post's tagging history.

What you are proposing doesn't even change much other than make it harder for users to find your tag edits through your profile page.
They could still go under the main Posts tab and select Changes to find all of your nasty little secrets.

In all honesty though, nobody is going to care what you tagged on whatever post.
If you are paranoid that some bad actor from the outside is going to dig through your profile, then you shouldn't have used a username that people could trace you down for (and request for a username change).
Alternatively, just use a separate "anonymous" account to do all of your business and not have to worry about random busybody messing around with your privacy and stuff.

Honestly, if the worst piece of dirt someone can find on you is your e621 edit history then I doubt you would have much to worry about. I have edited numerous posts that I actively dislike, even disabling my blacklist just so I don't have to skip any posts. If someone ever accused me of liking something just because I edited a post that had that tag I would probably just laugh in their face.

Post history is public so users can report tag abusers to administrators. And I highly doubt anyone will care that you're tagging literally any post on the site, and if they do then they probably aren't worth listening to anyways...

thegreatwolfgang said:
I mean, that would make it difficult to see if someone has been abusing the tags, wouldn't it?

Of course I had the thought that hiding things could potentially enable some other form of abuse (even if it wouldn't affect what site staff could see) but I also thought that the details of how the feature would actually work without doing so could be worked out in discussion.

thegreatwolfgang said:
They could still go under the main Posts tab and select Changes to find all of your nasty little secrets.

It's true, I honestly forgot about this feature entirely and because of it maybe there would simply be no point in implementing my suggestion or something to its effect.

thegreatwolfgang said:
If you are paranoid that some bad actor from the outside is going to dig through your profile, then you shouldn't have used a username that people could trace you down for (and request for a username change).
Alternatively, just use a separate "anonymous" account to do all of your business and not have to worry about random busybody messing around with your privacy and stuff.

Well, hindsight is 20/20, isn't it. I don't think this is necessarily a workable solution since I've also uploaded some of my own art, and commented on it as myself, but in the end considering the other points this probably amounts to an "oh well". (Also having an alt and logging out to switch to it or using it on a separate parallel browser account is just kind of a pain in the ass, even though I still do it in some cases, like Twitter having a 5-account max for whatever reason)

definitelynotafurry4 said:
And I highly doubt anyone will care that you're tagging literally any post on the site, and if they do then they probably aren't worth listening to anyways...

I obviously agree that the opinions of this kind of person aren't worth the smallest amount of consideration, but a determined one can still do a lot of damage regardless of whether you care about their opinion, lol

So it turns out this suggestion doesn't actually make sense given the structure of the site, and I understand why now and I'm fine with that. I gave it a shot

Of course I had the thought that hiding things could potentially enable some other form of abuse (even if it wouldn't affect what site staff could see) but I also thought that the details of how the feature would actually work without doing so could be worked out in discussion.

We are few, so we actually catch very little on our own. Most of what we hit people for is reported, hiding things away like this would severely damage that.
Contrary to the beliefs of some, we don't have any automated checks, and we don't watch the stream of post changes/whatever else to check for abuse. Most of what we catch is, as I said, through user reports.

FYI, using an alt for something like this can land you in hot water very quickly if you don't do things just right. Don't double vote on comments/posts, don't make knowingly incorrect edits on one account, don't bypass upload limits, etc etc. I'd more advise just changing your name to something no one you know would recognize, then not caring about what people see. It's all just people behind a screen, their opinion doesn't really matter. Hell, I used to curate my favorites so that people wouldn't snoop through them and find weird shit. Then I stopped caring, realized I don't actually care for those people's opinions.

kijete_santakalu said:
It's true, I honestly forgot about this feature entirely and because of it maybe there would simply be no point in implementing my suggestion or something to its effect.

There are numerous search interfaces on this site which include filter options not available to ordinary users. For example, the tickets page has almost no search options available to the general public. Removing the option to filter by user from the general Changes tab would be trivial (and the link on your profile page is just a shortcut to do the same thing). Of course, this still wouldn't render the information completely inaccessible to someone who already knows which posts to check, and the idea is a terrible one in the first place for reasons already explained.

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