Reddit can dress this up as a user convenience feature, but the article nails the real motivation: throwaway accounts make it harder to target ads. By letting users hide posts and comments, Reddit hopes people will stick to their main accounts instead of creating temporary ones for controversial content. As someone who’s no fan of the modern advertising surveillance complex, I’ll admit my bias upfront.

Here’s the thing: I don’t think this will work, and my experience backs that up.

I used to moderate /r/legaladvice and /r/personalfinance. Those moderator permissions? They’re tied to an account I no longer use. These days, I post from /u/quinnypig, where I share exactly the kind of comments you’d expect from me.

What I’ve learned over the years is that throwaway accounts serve a different purpose than Reddit seems to think. Yes, people create them to avoid having embarrassing content on their main profile. But that’s not the whole story.

The real driver is avoiding the moment when someone reads your controversial post and clicks through to see who wrote it. Even if I could hide an unfortunate post from my profile page, that doesn’t stop someone from reading it in the wild, clicking my username, and connecting it to everything else I’ve posted. The damage happens at the point of discovery, not during profile browsing.

Reddit’s missing the forest for the trees here. Privacy isn’t just about what shows up on your profile—it’s about maintaining separation between your identities in the first place.