Reddit trick to view hidden posts has been patched

The popular trick to view hidden posts on Reddit no longer works. The trick stopped working after a recent platform patch, since it closed a loophole that people used to use to bypass the profile hide settings.

Earlier, there was a basic method to bypass the hidden profile settings. If you open any profile page and go to the search bar, typing a space, period, or asterisk pulls up all of the posts and comments that the user has hidden. The same glitch also applied to global searches when author filters were applied.

There’s no available timeline on when it was exactly patched. It has started quietly rolling out in recent weeks. Users across several SubReddits, such as r/privacy, noticed it and began posting about it. Running the old method no longer returns the hidden posts, and it has been patched on both the mobile apps and the web apps.

Since people who hide comments now get real protection and can share opinions without worrying about public searches, people who are advocates for privacy obviously celebrate this change. However, others used this trick to check whether accounts were being serious about debates, since hiding behind anonymity often results in ad hominem or irrelevant to context debates, people just trolling, or bots. The reception to this change has mostly been mixed.

Reddit didn’t make a pubic announcement about this change. They rolled it out quietly, and they’ve directly adjusted the search results. You can open your own profile and test out the changes for yourself. This is clearly a backend change, and there’s no way to get the old trick back. The trick of using author:username no longer works either.

I’ve tried the trick myself on the web, and I can confirm it no longer works. The trick of going to the search bar and categorizing to ‘New’ no longer works either. Some people report that searching the username on Google still works for them, but it does not work in other cases; a patch is likely on the way for this method as well.

Reddit also seems to be going through other advertisement-related problems, with long-time users accusing the platform of holding organic content hostage.

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