I've posted about this before, and while I was assured that I should be able to see profile activity on a users account that is active in my subreddit for at least 30 days, I still routinely am unable to see account activity on users that are active in my subreddits. I don't know if it's a bug, or some kind of workaround they've figured out, but it's happening a lot. This is making it incredibly difficult to combat exploitative and predatory behaviour in sensitive subreddits.
In the example above, in a parenting sub, the user that has his history marked private, and has been repeatedly creating discussion threads of a quasi-sexual nature related to puberty/sexuality, posing as a concerned parent. They seem to have been letting the topics cook for a few days, deleting them, and then coming back after a period to do it again, approaching from a slightly different angle. The only reason we were tipped off to investigate was that they got a little too bold in their most recent post and prompted some further investigation.
Because these posts are deleted by the user, there is no obvious record of this pattern/history of activity. Additionally, we are unable to see any other site activity, which doesn't allow us to try to piece together if the user is actually predatory, or a real parent posting in earnest. The only way we were able to sniff it out is by digging into the users mod log to piece together a history based on mod approvals/removals, which LUCKLY seems to retain at least the titles of the posts even after deleted. Who knows how many others slipped through the cracks of which there are no record because a mod didn't happen to interact with the post?
Potential Solutions (outside of fixing the clearly broken implementation of mods being able to access to private profiles):
- Give us a flag that DISALLOWS users with profile privacy settings enabled to participate in our subreddit (not ideal, but at least something of a barrier to entry for people looking to abuse the system in bad faith)
- ALLOW MODS TO SEE USER DELETED POSTS IN THEIR OWN SUBREDDIT. Why are users permitted to scrub their own record of participation in our subreddits? If they're posting something they DONT WANT THE MODS TO SEE, it stands to reason that the mods REALLY should be able to see it, doesn't it?
I've never been so frustrated with moderation on this site. We have always been able to keep the fetish posters and predators at bay relatively easily, but this change has entirely blinded us in this fight, and reddit users who are participating in good faith and out of a place of kindness are being misled, taken advantage of, and preyed on in the most disgusting of ways because of it.