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chefcook90 4 Oct @ 1:14am
Is it my imagination, or do toxic users tend to have their profiles set to private?
EDIT: And NO, I'm not saying everyone with a private profile is a toxic user - I've already had two comments from people who misunderstood my post.

Just to be clear, this is not a thread complaining about toxicity on the forums - this is about an honest observation I've made over the years, and I'm curious if anyone else has noticed the same, or if it's just my imagination.

Like, I'll run into someone who's picking fights for no reason / clown farming / ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on a game despite not owning said game, and the first thing that stands out is that they're Steam Level 0, which generally means a private profile.

Now this honestly could just be confirmation bias on my part, but if other people have noticed the same thing, I'm curious as to why they do it.

It's not like Steam makes you share personal information on your profile - there's nothing stopping you from just leaving your page blank or choosing to only display very select information. What exactly are you "protecting" by setting a profile to 100% private?
Last edited by chefcook90; 4 Oct @ 1:40am
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Originally posted by Anonymous Helper:
Originally posted by chefcook90:
OK, THIS was the kind of discussion I was hoping for. What I was wondering is, is there even a point to going to the extra step of setting the account to "private" if it's just meant to be disposable in the first place?

For limited/new accounts? Not anymore. Trolls used to use private setting to hide the fact that their account was new/limited to give them legitimacy but couple years ago Valve made it so that limited account names would show as numbers instead of what alias account was set up with regardless of privacy settings so now you can identify if account posting is limited at a glance.

This change also somewhat reduced accusations against privated unlimited accounts as previously you could not distinguish them from privated limited accounts so people tended to accuse privated unlimited accounts being limited level 0 troll accounts. Still happens but far less than it used to.
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Showing 1-15 of 16 comments
Anonymous Helper 4 Oct @ 1:21am 
Nope, they are just people who care about their privacy (too few people do these days). As for what information they want private? Screenshots, artwork, games they and play, their game time, their friends, groups they are in etc. etc. etc. Basically all information in their profile and they are perfectly in their right to do so. What and why they private things is no one else's business but their own.

IMHO, all new profiles should be set to 100% private by default and showing things to others should be opt in, not out.
Last edited by Anonymous Helper; 4 Oct @ 1:23am
#1
chefcook90 4 Oct @ 1:34am 
Originally posted by Anonymous Helper:
IMHO, all new profiles should be set to 100% private by default and showing things to others should be opt in, not out.
Wait, I thought all of that WAS opt-in?

EDIT: also there seems to be some confusion here - I'm not saying everyone with a private profile is a toxic user - I'm saying that toxic users tend to have private profiles.

Is it just that toxic people value their privacy more than friendly people? I suppose that would certainly make sense from a psychological standpoint.
Last edited by chefcook90; 4 Oct @ 1:38am
#2
༺Bloody༽☨༼Moon༻ 4 Oct @ 1:37am 
Private profiles have nothing to do with toxic users, and calling everyone with private profiles toxic, just makes you a perfect example of ignorance.
#3
chefcook90 4 Oct @ 1:38am 
Originally posted by ༺Bloody༽☨༼Moon༻:
Private profiles have nothing to do with toxic users, and calling everyone with private profiles toxic, just makes you a perfect example of ignorance.
Bro, you've got it completely backwards.
#4
Anonymous Helper 4 Oct @ 1:40am 
Originally posted by chefcook90:
Originally posted by Anonymous Helper:
IMHO, all new profiles should be set to 100% private by default and showing things to others should be opt in, not out.
Wait, I thought all of that WAS opt-in?

I mean all profiles should be private by default and if you wanted to show something, you'd have to opt out it of the default everything private settings. I'm pretty sure new profiles have everything public by default so choosing privacy is opt in instead of opt out.
Last edited by Anonymous Helper; 4 Oct @ 1:42am
#5
Anonymous Helper 4 Oct @ 1:50am 
Originally posted by chefcook90:
EDIT: also there seems to be some confusion here - I'm not saying everyone with a private profile is a toxic user - I'm saying that toxic users tend to have private profiles.

Is it just that toxic people value their privacy more than friendly people? I suppose that would certainly make sense from a psychological standpoint.

My observation is the large portion of trolls use new/limited accounts. This is obviously because they don't want to lose anything when the account is inevitably going to get banned anyway. This obviously does not mean most new/limited accounts are trolls. Trolls just use them because they cost nothing and are easily disposed off.
#6
chefcook90 4 Oct @ 1:50am 
Originally posted by Anonymous Helper:
Originally posted by chefcook90:
Wait, I thought all of that WAS opt-in?

I mean all profiles should be private by default and if you wanted to show something, you'd have to opt out it of the default everything private settings. I'm pretty sure new profiles have everything public by default so choosing privacy is opt in instead of opt out.
Ah yeah, I was under the impression that you just start with a blank profile, and that you need to opt in for each specific feature you want to share, like play time, screenshots, games, whether people can post on your wall, etc, etc. so the only functional difference between a fresh account and a private on is that a Private account says "Private" on it.
#7
༺Bloody༽☨༼Moon༻ 4 Oct @ 1:52am 
Originally posted by chefcook90:
Originally posted by ༺Bloody༽☨༼Moon༻:
Private profiles have nothing to do with toxic users, and calling everyone with private profiles toxic, just makes you a perfect example of ignorance.
Bro, you've got it completely backwards.
Bro, anyone who chooses to keep their profile private doesn’t have to answer to anyone. Everyone here is a complete STRANGER, and you’re a STRANGER, not friend. No one owes you anything, and no one has to prove anything to anyone.
If someone breaks Steam’s rules, the moderators handle it, not you.

You’ve basically slandered anyone with a private profile, as if only people who break the rules have only private profiles. You’re pretty foolish
#8
chefcook90 4 Oct @ 1:52am 
Originally posted by Anonymous Helper:
Originally posted by chefcook90:
EDIT: also there seems to be some confusion here - I'm not saying everyone with a private profile is a toxic user - I'm saying that toxic users tend to have private profiles.

Is it just that toxic people value their privacy more than friendly people? I suppose that would certainly make sense from a psychological standpoint.

My observation is the large portion of trolls use new/limited accounts. This is obviously because they don't want to lose anything when the account is inevitably going to get banned anyway. This obviously does not mean most new/limited accounts are trolls. Trolls just use them because they cost nothing and are easily disposed off.
OK, THIS was the kind of discussion I was hoping for. What I was wondering is, is there even a point to going to the extra step of setting the account to "private" if it's just meant to be disposable in the first place?
#9
chefcook90 4 Oct @ 1:53am 
Originally posted by ༺Bloody༽☨༼Moon༻:
Originally posted by chefcook90:
Bro, you've got it completely backwards.
Bro, anyone who chooses to keep their profile private doesn’t have to answer to anyone. Everyone here is a complete STRANGER, and you’re a STRANGER, not friend. No one owes you anything, and no one has to prove anything to anyone.
If someone breaks Steam’s rules, the moderators handle it, not you.

You’ve basically slandered anyone with a private profile, as if only people who break the rules have only private profiles. You’re pretty foolish
Ok, I'm going to ask you to slow down, and re-read my title and OP, very, VERY carefully.
#10
༺Bloody༽☨༼Moon༻ 4 Oct @ 1:56am 
Originally posted by chefcook90:
What exactly are you "protecting" by setting a profile to 100% private?

What does this mean? That you’re slandering everyone with a private profiles.
#11
The author of this thread has indicated that this post answers the original topic.
Anonymous Helper 4 Oct @ 2:09am 
Originally posted by chefcook90:
OK, THIS was the kind of discussion I was hoping for. What I was wondering is, is there even a point to going to the extra step of setting the account to "private" if it's just meant to be disposable in the first place?

For limited/new accounts? Not anymore. Trolls used to use private setting to hide the fact that their account was new/limited to give them legitimacy but couple years ago Valve made it so that limited account names would show as numbers instead of what alias account was set up with regardless of privacy settings so now you can identify if account posting is limited at a glance.

This change also somewhat reduced accusations against privated unlimited accounts as previously you could not distinguish them from privated limited accounts so people tended to accuse privated unlimited accounts being limited level 0 troll accounts. Still happens but far less than it used to.
Last edited by Anonymous Helper; 4 Oct @ 2:11am
#12
chefcook90 4 Oct @ 2:13am 
Originally posted by Anonymous Helper:
Originally posted by chefcook90:
OK, THIS was the kind of discussion I was hoping for. What I was wondering is, is there even a point to going to the extra step of setting the account to "private" if it's just meant to be disposable in the first place?

For limited/new accounts? Not anymore. Trolls used to use private setting to hide the fact that their account was new/limited to give them legitimacy but couple years ago Valve made it so that limited account names would show as numbers instead of what alias account was set up with regardless of privacy settings so now you can identify if account posting is limited at a glance.

This change also somewhat reduced accusations against privated unlimited accounts as previously you could not distinguish them from privated limited accounts so people tended to accuse privated unlimited accounts being limited level 0 troll accounts. Still happens but far less than it used to.
AH so that's what it was! Thanks - that pretty much answers my question :D
#13
Anonymous Helper 4 Oct @ 2:27am 
Originally posted by chefcook90:
AH so that's what it was! Thanks - that pretty much answers my question :D

No problem and you're welcome. Do note that it does not prevent trolls with money to burn to create as many unlimited troll accounts they want but at least they lose the 5$ deposit each time one of them gets perma banned. Unfortunately there's not much Valve can do about it other than maybe increase the cost of unlimiting an account. I highly doubt they want to make creation of account harder as it would directly affect their bottom line.
Last edited by Anonymous Helper; 4 Oct @ 11:00am
#14
Frequens 4 Oct @ 4:23am 
Believe it or not, but some of the most toxic users I came across on this platform were all regular accounts set to public. I mean, just take a look at the Off Topic hub every now and then and you'll notice a certain pattern with some sick internet puppies and their alts constantly wreaking havoc on the discussions - and they're all public profiles.

Many private profiles also appear as 'private' while they're actually set to 'friends only'. It's mostly people who just want to be left alone and who are not much interested in engaging with the community. In my experience, behind many, if not most privates are in fact secretive, shy and withdrawn individuals who are simply embarassed by the games in their libraries, or the thousands of hours they accumulated in certain titles and which they don't want anyone to see.
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Date Posted: 4 Oct @ 1:14am
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